Durandal wrote:David wrote:I said indirectly, and while you might never hurt anyone by drinking alcohol tens of thousands of other people do, and if the only way to stop their deaths is to ban alcohol entirely then it would be worth doing.
And you know what?
Millions of people
don't hurt anyone. You're punishing an astounding majority for the actions of a minority.
Damien, you have to look at overall magnitude of harm, not just numbers of harm incidents. A harm done to a million people
can be less important than a harm done to 10 people, if the million suffer something insignificant (like not being able to eat lollipops for a year) while the 10 suffer something massive (eg- torture and death). In this case, you are taking the loss of drinking privileges for the entire population and assuming that it
must outweigh any and all damages caused by alcohol abuse.
Let's look at the numbers, shall we? From the
full text of the 10th Special Report to the U.S. Congress on Alcohol & Health:
Forty-four percent of the adult U.S. population (aged 18 and over) are current drinkers who have consumed at least 12 drinks in the preceding year (Dawson et al. 1995). While most people who drink do so safely, the minority who consume alcohol heavily produce an impact that ripples outward to encompass their families, friends, and communities. The following statistics give a glimpse of the magnitude of problem drinking:
- Approximately 14 million Americans—7.4 percent of the population—meet the diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse or alcoholism (Grant et al. 1994).
- More than one-half of American adults have a close family member who has or has had alcoholism (Dawson and Grant 1998).
- Approximately one in four children younger than 18 years old in the United States is exposed to alcohol abuse or alcohol dependence in the family (Grant 2000).
- Of 11.1 million victims of violent crime each year, almost one in four, or 2.7 million, report that the offender had been drinking alcohol prior to committing the crime (Greenfeld 1998).
- Traffic crashes involving alcohol killed more than 16,000 people in 1997 alone (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration 1998).
- The estimated economic cost of alcohol abuse was $184.6 billion for 1998 alone, or roughly $638 for every man, woman, and child living in the United States that year (Harwood et al. 2000).
So, we are talking about 14 million people who are addicted, one half of the adult population which is affected, 25% of children whose upbringings are polluted, 2.7 million involved in drinking-related violence, 16000 deaths directly attributable to alcohol abuse, and nearly $200 billion in economic damage. And you consider this inconsequential next to the (gasp!) loss of drinking privileges?
Please explain how you came to quantify the damage done by loss of drinking privileges in such a manner that this tragic loss so handily and obviously exceeds all of the aforementioned destructive impact of alcohol abuse.
How so? My arguement has been consistent throughout except for that one sentence where I made a mistake. Considering it was made while I was trying to keep up with debating 4 people at one time I don't see the problem.
