They tried to make it illegal and the results were disastrous, one could argue the same for marijuana but the campaign to keep it illegal was much more successful.
Why is alcohol legal if it's much more harmful than marijuana?
Submitted 8 months ago by 3volver@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
MisterD@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
That’s because cannabis was more popular with black people in the 70s. The racists used the cannabis laws against blacks because it gave them a bonner
gregorum@lemm.ee 8 months ago
It definitely started much earlier than that, but yes.
Maeve@kbin.social 8 months ago
Bootleggers and alcohol could deposit their money in bank accounts. Legal groups can not.
transientpunk@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Autocorrect is AI powered now… 🎉
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Well, there was this one time when we tried out the whole “making alcohol illegal” thing and it worked out about as well as the current “war on drugs.” Just like drugs are winning, alcohol won.
The first anti-drug laws weren’t really on the books until Nixon, who definitely used them as a way to pin down and criminalize parts of society he deemed unworthy.
July 1971 was when Drug Prohibition started. Before that, technically everything was legal.
Scrof@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Tradition, mainly. It’s so ingrained in the majority of cultures that you can’t simply uproot it with a law. Although it should be a more controlled substance, no doubt about that. It’s addictive, debilitating, incredibly harmful and it simply destroys more lives than literally any drug known to man.
medgremlin@midwest.social 8 months ago
It’s also one of the most dangerous drugs to try to quit. Going cold turkey on alcohol can very well be lethal.
InformalTrifle@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It can, if you’re drinking seriously large amounts, but one of the most dangerous drugs in this regard? I have no scientific background in this but I’m skeptical there aren’t worse drugs in that regard
set_secret@lemmy.world 8 months ago
what about women?
set_secret@lemmy.world 8 months ago
lol at the 5 misogynists downvotes.
Using gendered language, such as “known to man,” is outdated and overlooks the contributions of individuals who don’t identify as men. It’s not just about being politically correct; it’s about being accurate and inclusive. Language shapes our perception of reality, and by using more inclusive language, we acknowledge and respect the diversity of contributions across all genders. Calling this out isn’t about policing language for the sake of it; it’s about moving towards a society that values everyone’s contributions equally. Let’s push for language that includes everyone, reflecting the true diversity of human achievement.
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 8 months ago
some women drink too, I’ve seen it first-hand
orphiebaby@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I came here to say this. This is really the real response. “Prohibition didn’t work” isn’t the reason, it’s the results of a response.
pjwestin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Going to try to give you a clear, concise summary, since a lot of these answers are either too specific or blatantly unhelpful.
First, alcohol has been used by humans since before recorded history. It was probably the first drug we ever used, and barley was even used as a currency in ancient Mesopotamia. Alcohol is ingrained in almost every human society, and banning it is always difficult. The United States actually made alcohol illegal between 1920 and 1933, and it was an unmitigated disaster.
Second, Marijuana wasn’t always illegal in the United States. To give you a very oversimplified summary, the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst ran a racist, xenophobic campaign to vilify Marijuana in the early '30s. He saw hemp crops as a threat to his holdings in the lumber and paper industry, so he had his newspapers run exaggerated or false stories about crime and violence related to Marijuana use, usually center around Mexicans or black Americans. The movie Reefer Madness is a great example of this kind of propaganda. Marijuana was eventually made illegal in 1937, and as the War on Drugs ramped up over the decades, enforcement and penalties for Marijuana crimes only got worse.
Anyway, there’s a ton more that could be said about Prohibition, pre-Hurst Marijuana use, and the War on Drugs, but those are the broad strokes. Hope that helps.
3volver@lemmy.world 8 months ago
So would it be fair to say that keeping marijuana illegal is a major part of institutional racism?
pjwestin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Oh yes, 100%.
stoly@lemmy.world 8 months ago
This is and always has been the case. Any resistance to change here is fully based on racism.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Agree on your second point but i doubt your first is relevant.
Its true what you say about alcohol but cannabis too was cultivated before recorded history, estimated to have started 12000 years ago at the same time we figured out farming in general.
For most of human history it was a well known medicinal plant (in asia)
It did exist in Europe and America but i knowledge about drugs just wasn’t all that common while brewed alcohol drinks, which where much healthier then dirty unboiled water was common everywhere. I bet if someone passed you a joint in those times you’d just assume its a weird brand of Tobacco and because thc and cbd balance was on a more natural level you wouldn’t have gotten very high from it.
pjwestin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yes, but Marijuana wasn’t nearly as widespread as alcohol. Cannabis crops didn’t start to spread globally until the 12 century, so tons of cultures developed without it. Meanwhile, alcohol isn’t a crop, it’s an organic compound that can be fermented from tons of crops across the globe. Aside from the North American tribes, pretty much every human civilization developed a fermentation process.
JustAnotherRando@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Thanks for reminding me how much I fucking hate Hearst (the family and the corporation).
pjwestin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Thanks! I wanted to give OP a broad understanding without going into an overwhelming amount of detail, but boy did it take a lot of restraint to not to go into a three paragraph rant on drug scheduling and mandatory minimums.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
toynbee@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Also cotton moguls, I think?
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
sure they had something to do with it, there’s no example of US fuckery that doesn’t involve industrial protection of some kind.
I’d wager also that tobacco and alcohol fought marijuana as hard if not harder than the GOV’s position a lone.
Nomecks@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Rope
magic_lobster_party@kbin.run 8 months ago
This is a non-US perspective, but my take is this:
Alcohol production has a long and rich history. Many cultures, in particular western, have their own relationships to alcohol. The development of different alcohol production processes tells a lot about the history of a culture.
Belgian monks with their beer brewing styles. Scotch whiskey. French wine yards. Even Japanese with their sake.
Remove wine from France, and we will have another French Revolution with guillotines again. It’s difficult to remove something that’s so heavily ingrained in the culture without public outrage. Alcohol is part of the identity.
Few cultures have marijuana as part of their identity, hence it’s easier to ban.
olafurp@lemmy.world 8 months ago
In Soviet Russia and Tsarist Russia vodka was a big source of state revenue. During the Bolshevik revolution they cut down on alcohol since they thought it wasn’t good for the population as a whole. It got restarted later by using the same factories and changed the bottles to include a red star on it.
stoly@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They wanted an excuse to lock up people of color and disrupt communities. With the civil rights act, they couldn’t go old school. So they invented the “war” on drugs specifically because blacks and Latinos were stereotyped as being cannabis smokers. This is all about racism.
viking@infosec.pub 8 months ago
Not everything in the world revolves around the US…
mojo_raisin@lemmy.world 8 months ago
In this case it is. Cannabis laws globally were influenced, often coerced by the U.S., so the race issues that made cannabis illegal here affected much of the world for decades and still does.
stoly@lemmy.world 8 months ago
However when the context is the US, you can keep your edginess to yourself.
Etterra@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Part of it also is that it’s entrenched in virtually all human societies and history. There’s even archeological evidence to support the theory that humans only started settling down to slow them to make more and better beer, count the beer, protect the beer, and tax the beer. They even made bread for the explicit purpose of making beer out of it.
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Unlike marijuana, alcohol has been an important part of (the western) society for thousands of years. And the last time we tried banning it, it didn’t go too well.
zik@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Also politicians drink alcohol so they’re not exactly lining up to ban it.
HeartyBeast@kbin.social 8 months ago
Alcohols cultural and historical position in society
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s also easier to make than cannabis. Alcohol will ferment in nature, you literally don’t have to do anything to make (crappy) alcohol. Good luck banning that, we tried once, went even worse than the war on drugs.
Vent@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Marijuana grows in nature and you just need to dry it out and light it on fire.
Riccosuave@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s also easier to make than cannabis.
You are aware that Cannabis is a plant, and therefore naturally occurring, yes? It was literally on the planet for hundreds of millions of years before modern homosapiens.
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Aka, a lot of old money people are really invested in it.
Melkath@fedia.io 8 months ago
Ya. That. And not prohibition. Aka money people trying to outlaw it and the people saying "you can't control me".
stinerman@midwest.social 8 months ago
Yes if someone invented it today, it’d be banned. Just like libraries.
vodkasolution@feddit.it 8 months ago
I was about to reply “tradition” but you got it better
someguy3@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They tried prohibition, didn’t work.
The way I see it. Alcohol is kinda an older drug, so it was engrained in society. But the new drug marijuana could be cracked down on. Also because it was hippies that smoked marijuana, but everyone drank alcohol.
Maeve@kbin.social 8 months ago
And the Reefer Madness propaganda
gencha@feddit.de 8 months ago
A bit of perspective: During the prohibition in the USA, both cocaine and heroin were sold legally over the counter.
Most illegal drugs today are perfectly legal when a pharmaceutical company produces it and you are purchasing it through channels where the elite gets paid.
cley_faye@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’d say for two reasons. First, laws are written by a bunch of old people (at least in the head) that love the stuff. Second, full prohibition does not work anyway.
TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Racism is the short answer believe it or not
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 8 months ago
what ?
sushibowl@feddit.nl 8 months ago
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
JudahBenHur@lemm.ee 8 months ago
they mean the heavy criminalization of drugs wasnt about drugs, it was about opressing people. Nixon had a problem with counter culture hippies and blacks. The solution was to impose heavy criminal charges for what they did, smoking pot and also herion in the black communities at the time (so I’ve read several times, I’m no historian nor expert though).
Like if you wanted to oppress middle class white people you could make chardonnay illegial and jail prople who you send the cops to bust for drinking it
aspiring_sage@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Rottcodd@kbin.social 8 months ago
The other answers mostly sum it up - it was initially made illegal primarily as a way to establish an "other" with which to frighten conservatives.
There's another thing that hasn't been mentioned yet though that I've long thought is relevant - is part of the reason that marijuana specifically was for so long (and still is in some quarters) so condemned.
Imagine you're a corrupt politician, and you want to sell your constituents on the idea of going to war in the Middle East (so you can collect some bribes from defense contractors and oil companies) or instituting mandatory sentencing (so you can collect some bribes from prison contractors) or cutting taxes on the wealthy (so you can collect bribes from rich people and corporations) or any of the other, similar things that corrupt politicians want to do
Who would you rather try selling that idea to? A bunch of pot smokers or a bunch of drinkers?
I think part of the issue is that marijuana appeals to a part of the population that really is, to corrupt politicians and their cronies and patrons, "undesirable." When they want to get the people all fired up in support of their latest bullshit, they want somebody with a beer in their hand, drunkenly shouting, "Yeah! Kick their asses!" Not somebody with a joint in their hand, muzzily saying, "Hold on a minute - you want to do what?"
Djtecha@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Because you’re not voting in the right people.
Steve@startrek.website 8 months ago
Something about the timber industry
SloppySol@lemm.ee 8 months ago
One makes you think less, and one makes you think more haha
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Or rather, one makes you act without thinking, the other makes you think without action.
shortwavesurfer@monero.town 8 months ago
Oh, that is so damn true. You’re just like laying on your bed, like, “man fuck this shit.”
ptz@dubvee.org 8 months ago
They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you’re high, you can do everything you normally do just as well—you just realize that it’s not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference.
- Bill Hicks
lvxferre@mander.xyz 8 months ago
you just realize that it’s not worth the fucking effort
Unless it’s a big arse sandwich. Including everything that you find in the fridge. Even the stuff that belongs to your roommate, like the slice of ham he was keeping for his breakfast.
Source: I was that roommate.
bartolomeo@suppo.fi 8 months ago
The drunk driver runs a stop sign and the high driver waits till it turns green.
ghostrider2112@lemmy.world 8 months ago
One has also had studies that shows it causes the user to have more empathy while under its influence. The other is more common in domestic violence.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Patriarchy: MMmmm . . . I’ll take the domestic violence one.
OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee 8 months ago
The US tried to ban it and it just led to gangs becoming super powerful because they sold people illegal alcohol.
So it’s not really a policy choice like “this is safe enough, this is not safe enough” it’s legal because making it illegal doesn’t work.
Kage520@lemmy.world 8 months ago
US didn’t really ban it because they didn’t like it. While there was a women’s group protesting against the alcoholism in the country, I don’t think it would have had any traction were it not for the anti union push.
Saloons were a great meetup spot to make unions. Everyone from work was already there. If companies could make saloons illegal, it would make it harder to make unions. But there was a problem. The US got a lot of its tax revenue from alcohol taxes.
So they pitched the idea of replacing alcohol tax with income tax, making the budget balance (in fact much improve!). So it got passed to benefit the US government budget, and help the union situation for companies.
It was not prohibited for long. As you stated, it quickly went awry. But it didn’t matter. The US government now gets its income tax, plus alcohol tax now. Saloons became less popular since they were gone long enough for habits to change.
thewebroach@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s still the same situation with illegal drugs, but America outsourced the production and supply chain largely underground (and to other countries as they are much easier to smuggle than alcohol.) So same problems and empowering gangs, but happening outside Americas borders, and thus not America’s problem. Most present day issues with drug cartels are a derivative of America trying to control peoples’ access to substances and driving them from the open market to the black market… seems to have done a lot more harm to the world and peoples lives than good (as an opinion).
shea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Kinda like…
CaptainHowdy@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I have one word for you, OP: Racism.
The marijuana tax stamp law was put in place because American politicians and voters didn’t like black and Mexican people. At the time, it was primarily used by those demographics. Now, of course, it’s used pretty equally by everyone.
Bitflip@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
You can’t make cheaper paper with alcohol.
Nomecks@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Rope was where it all started. Thanks DuPont!
Landless2029@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Hemp rope and hemp cloth. Good for sacks and shipping.
Competition against cotton…
fhek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Years and years and years of lobbying. Also taxes.
ExcursionInversion@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Bingo
LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Because so many people are addicted to it, even the lawmakers are addicted to it. And as other commenters have said, we tried prohibition in the past and it did not work. Society lost their collective minds.
Allero@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Everyone is talking about tradition and racism and everything
But there’s one more point to note: alcohol prohibition is much harder to enforce. You can easily make simple alcoholic beverages out of what’s already on your kitchen, and it’s not that someone will constantly monitor whatcha doin’ there.
As a result, home brewing emerges, creating much more dangerous products that are not subject to quality control standards enforced on factories. People still drink alcohol, but this time it gets bundled with a suite of dangerous chemicals produced in an uncontrolled brewing process.
Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I mean, it’s pretty easy to grow a plant in your house too…easier, probably, than managing everything necessary to ensure safe brewing or distilling.
turmacar@lemmy.world 8 months ago
During prohibition grape (formerly wine) producers sold grape juice with the warning label “don’t store in a cool dark place for multiple weeks or this product may become illegal”. (or something to that effect) You can do much the same with any grain or fruit.
For Marijuana you have to at least get seeds/the plant first, which are now a controlled product.
Brewing at scale and/or for a specific product is difficult, making alcohol is easy.
Dasus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
easier, probably, than managing everything necessary to ensure safe brewing or distilling.
As someone who grows and homebrews, unless you live in a sunny part of the world and can grow weed with the sun/outside, brewing beer is easier than growing weed. For weed, you’ll need actual equipment, whereas for homebrewing, you just need a bucket, basically. With a lid and an airlock if you wish to be reasonably safe about the drink. Pour in apple juice and let it sit for a few weeks, you got yourself some apple cider.
Distillation is more difficult, yeah, but not much more difficult than making simple extracts out of weed.
Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Two things really.
-
Tradition. Alcohol has a long history in European culture and by immigration the United States. It’s common to have a glass of wine or a beer with dinner, the rich will impress their friends with the extravagant alcohol they drink serve, you take a glass of wine at communion… heck at one point weak beers were drunk more than water, because at the time nobody knew what made water safe to drink but everyone could tell if beer smelled rotten.
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Production. Marijuana is easy to grow, but it takes a lot of time and space to produce. Alcohol on the other hand you need something with sugar and some yeast or starter. It can be fermented in some corner of the basement or even a cupboard. It’s hard to control the production of alcohol even in prisons there’s usually someone fermenting pruno somewhere and that’s one of the most controlled and monitored environments. It’s really hard to prevent people from brewing some form of alcohol because it’s about as easy as making bread.
When you combine these two you end up with the disaster that occurred when the United States tried to ban alcohol during prohibition. An easy to produce intoxicant with a large market was suddenly banned, when people started looking for more organized crime stepped in to fill the void.
-
JustZ@lemmy.world 8 months ago
To add to what others have said, white sheriff in Texas popularized the term Marijuana in English language, as an intentional strategy to Mexicanize cannabis use, which they thought would cause communism or something.
Mr_Blott@lemmy.world 8 months ago
If you think marijuana isn’t going to do you serious mental harm in the long term, you’re a fool that’s been listening to people that haven’t been smoking more than a decade
cabron_offsets@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Dolla dolla bill
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
In a U.S. context, it is actually really simple. Racism and the age old practice of othering types of people by associating them with a drug (cocaine = rich and white, crack = poor, black and dangerous). That’s it, the full answer is of course a lot more complicated but in the end it is exactly still this dumb and cruel.
brookings.edu/…/marijuanas-racist-history-shows-t…
I actually think examining the rise of crack and how it was used as a political wedge and xenophobic tool of fear mongering, because the forces and structures are the same for crack being highly illegal as they are for marijuana, just much less thinly veiled.
bartolomeo@suppo.fi 8 months ago
Right, because alcohol is the white man’s drug. Plain and simple.
They made alcohol illegal for a while but it turned out to be too onerous for the white people so it was legalized again. Marijuana laws have caused massive damage to minority communities, so they remain in place.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
True after all alcohol is white enough of a drug that you can come from a run smuggling family and still become President and nobody bats an eye.
Zitronensaft@feddit.de 8 months ago
Marijuana was banned to target minorities, but alcohol prohibition mostly was repealed not because white people like alcohol, but because alcohol is stupidly easy to make from a wide variety of substances so most cultures around the world produce some kind of alcohol with their local crops. You can use pretty much anything sugary: fruit (wine), honey (mead), and grains like rice and wheat (sake & beer). It is really hard to ban a substance when half the foods in our diet can be turned into that substance if you let it sit in a jar or bucket in your closet for a few weeks.
Prohibition was repealed primarily because it was a futile effort and with alcohol being banned, very strong distilled spirits were the economical way to discreetly transport and serve alcohol since it is easier to hide a few bottles of liquor from authorities searching your truck or business than to hide large barrels of low ABV drinks like humans had been brewing and drinking for millennia. It is also a lot easier for people to drink themselves sick with distilled drinks, so ultimately it was decided that it was safer to make alcohol legal and regulated instead of having it still plentiful, but getting people sicker and funding criminal empires. It’s a lot easier to ban one plant than to ban every food source with sugar in it.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
People from Nixon’s cabinet have straight up said that they made both illegal and started the “War on Drugs” as justification so that they could lock up opposition leaders in both the black and hippie communities.
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
www.vox.com/2016/3/…/war-on-drugs-racism-nixon yuuuup
JustZ@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Read the book Sythentic Panics.
Talks all about this with wave after wave of synthetic drug scares. LSD, ecstasy, GHB, etc. All follow basically an identical pattern starting with a moral panic by mainly religious shitheels and corporate media.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Why be legislators and make progressive policies (ewww hard and so boringggg) when you can just tell stories about who is worthy of empathy and who isn’t?
threeganzi@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I don’t know too much about GHB, but from the little I’ve heard it sounds like it has a risk of deadly overdose, which I don’t think is the case for the first two examples you mentioned. You probably know more than me so perhaps you can enlighten me if they deserve to be grouped together?