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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> yeah, prohibition totally worked.

Americans are much more compliant now, not to mention health and socially conscious. For example, the culture of alcohol use has disparate impacts on black and brown communities: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2771773/ ("African Americans and Hispanics bear a disproportionately greater burden of alcohol-related health problems compared to whites, as evidenced by higher rates of liver cirrhosis, death rates due to cirrhosis, and rates of overall alcohol-related mortality.") That is true even though, for example, black Americans begin drinking later and drink less than white Americans: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3758406/.

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> yeah, prohibition totally worked.

>> Americans are much more compliant now

Are you saying prohibition is worth another attempt? Because we're currently in our 52nd year of the official start of the War on Drugs [1], which is just Prohibition by another name. Unofficially, the War on Drugs goes back much further, and it's a war that the government has been losing badly since the start [2]. Even per-capita, we're the biggest consumers of illegal drugs in the world [3]. So I'd be curious to hear what evidence of compliance you could give, which would outweigh the evidence of non-compliance going back to at least the Nixon administration.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

2. https://www.ahdbonline.com/articles/2053-are-we-winning-the-...

3. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/drug-use-...

It sounds like you're trolling, and that you're not seriously proposing a return to prohibition, but rather using it as a snarky frame with which to criticize unrelated beliefs.

I'm not trolling. I think America would be better if people didn't drink. I drink sometimes, but I also eat fried foods and skip the gym and do other things I'd acknowledge people shouldn't do.

Nor am I criticizing unrelated beliefs. I don't disagree with SJWs that we live in a society dominated by the attitudes and culture of white European Americans--including their drinking culture. I typically disagree with them on whether that's a bad thing, or how we should frame that for kids, or how that should affect legal relations between people. But I don't disagree with the notion that aspects of American culture adapted from Europeans--in this case drinking culture, but I'd also throw parenting culture in there, and individualism--can have negative impacts on minority groups.

Fair enough! I stand corrected.

> m not trolling. I think America would be better if people didn't drink

America simply drinks too much

We Italians are usually described as people who love to sit and drink all day.

On average Italians drink half the alcohol of Americans yearly.

Consider that in Italy non drinkers are ~25% while in America 36% of adults described themselves as “total abstainers”.

> Americans are much more compliant now

American health issue are mostly class based.

Black and brown people are poorer on average, hence they face more issues regarding health issues in general.

Alcohol abuse is a well known addiction among people of lower classes, while higher classes prefer other more expensive substances.

Also with more money available come higher quality alcoholic beverages.

If you look at the articles I linked, it's actually the opposite. Black people are almost twice as likely to report not drinking as white people. Alcohol use also increases with socioeconomic status: https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/blog/socioeconomic-status-....

that's probably because drinking in the US is very expensive.

which is a form of prohibitionism in itself, but didn't stop people from binge drinking.

Here in Italy, where wine is very cheap, you don't see people drinking like the Americans do, especially not adult people.

Kids, maybe, sometimes, we have a problem with young people binge drinking, mostly because they gathered those habits from American culture which massively influence their daily content consumption.

Back in the day the American culture my generation has been exposed to was very different about who drank on screen and why.

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