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Comment by newishuser | Hacker News Reader

Prohibition is never a solution to anything. What we need is a cultural shift of some sort that involves identifying people in situations that lead to increased risk of later in life criminal activity and providing them the tools they need to escape that fate. This is more complicated than just thinking critically about gun control.

The goal isn't to create a perfect, utopian, society. It's to target certain statistics for reduction. It's hard to get elected on a platform that has a 10 year wait for results.

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Prohibition is very definitely a solution to some problems. Take drugs as an example: You can make an argument that marijuana, or even harder drugs like cocaine or meth should be personal choices. But those arguments have limits.

For instance, nobody would run a "Legalize Vancomycin" campaign. Being one of our last resort antibiotics that remains effective against many cases of MRSA, preventing its overuse is critical. If not for our prescription drug system, it'd take less than a week for someone to start selling ANTIBACTERIAL SOAP! KILLS 99% OF MRSA! and the drug would become useless in short order.

While I won't say that's analogous to gun laws, it's a good example of there being cases where prohibition is an effective solution, and there are absolutely situations where things should only be available to people with a strong need to use them.

Saying that prohibition is never a solution reeks of the same aversion to complex opinions that the linked article was written about.

I don't agree. I think prohibition can coincide with a cultural perception that creates the illusion that the prohibition is effective, but in my opinion it's the culture itself not the prohibition.

Nothing can truly be prohibited. Especially things culture demands. What you're talking about is regulation anyway. There is a deference between prohibition and regulation. Take prescription drugs for example.

People absolutely would campaign to legalize Vancomycin if there was a cultural perception in favor of it's benefits.

>Prohibition: Noun The action of forbidding something, esp. by law. A law or regulation forbidding something.

I don't see how it isn't prohibition. What differentiates it from any other prescription drug, especially those with recreational uses? Would you apply the word to marijuana, but not to OxyContin?

Regarding your last point: If there were a massive outbreak of something best treated by Vancomycin, I'm sure we would see arguments that it should be available over the counter to anyone who wants some. And that would be a terrible idea because of people who would buy a bunch and take it constantly, figuring it would keep them safe. And maybe it would, but at the cost of Vancomycin becoming a less effective treatment, and overall a lot more people dying.

That's one aspect of the argument that does fit pretty well with the debate on firearms.

'Prohibition is never a solution to anything.'

This is clearly a massive claim which seems to be implausible by some common sense tests. But either way, it is definitely a belief rather than something provable.

Tax is a form of prohibition (on keeping all of your earnings). Any kind of law prohibits freedom in some way (at least in a kind of direct manner). Modern civil society seems predicated on the practice of prohibiting certain actions (and the requirement of others) for the common good.

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