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Does the DEA have a stance on why alcohol is legal?

LucidSDreamr

LucidSDreamr

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just wondering if they have an offical reason for allowing alcohol, which causes more deaths than any drug except opiates via drunk driving, causes as much crime as all other drugs.

its obviously very dangerous drug to have legal, why do they say its ok for it to be legal?

is it just, "well we have to let them have one drug at least" ....or do they actually believe alcohol is not that damaging to society.
 
Prohibition ended long before the DEA ever existed. Therefore I'd be very surprised if the DEA had any "official" opinion on alcohol.

The DEA gets a bad rap (I hate them too), but they're really just the most bureaucratic agency there is--totally at the will of the government and aware of that. What I mean is the Department of Education or the Department of the Interior aren't going anywhere, we're always going to have education and geography in this country. Whether we have drug prohibition is an actual question.
 
Felonious Monk said:
Prohibition ended long before the DEA ever existed. Therefore I'd be very surprised if the DEA had any "official" opinion on alcohol.

The DEA gets a bad rap (I hate them too), but they're really just the most bureaucratic agency there is--totally at the will of the government and aware of that. What I mean is the Department of Education or the Department of the Interior aren't going anywhere, we're always going to have education and geography in this country. Whether we have drug prohibition is an actual question.
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Does prohibition tie into it? Isn't alc prohibition in the constitution or amendment to it? everything else was legal before the dea but they systematically have been scheduling drugs, but choose to omit scheduling alcohol for some reason which I'm trying to find out.
 
Yes, alcohol prohibition is in the constitution, 18th amendment, it is then repealed in its entirety by the 21st amendment. So currently there isn't a constitutional position on alcohol specifically anymore.
 
they only have to comment on drugs they are making illegal i guess. They don't have to provide reasons for not scheduling dangerious drugs is what i guess is going on
 
LucidSDreamr said:
everything else was legal before the dea but they systematically have been scheduling drugs, but choose to omit scheduling alcohol for some reason which I'm trying to find out.
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You're not quite correct on that point. Some prohibition of drugs existed before the DEA, they have simply been interpreting the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Heroin, cocaine, and cannabis were all made illegal before the DEA existed. There were also controls on other drugs, including chloral hydrate.

And you keep saying "omit" scheduling. The 21st amendment to the UNITED STATES constitution specifically gives authority over alcoholic beverages to the states.

An act of congress (such as the Controlled Substances Act), cannot contradict the Constitution.

The DEA has taken excess authority to schedule additional drugs. The "emergency scheduling" provision is part of the Controlled Substances Act (and I believe reiterated in the 1985 Analog Act), but one could certainly argue that the courts have given them far too much deference over that authority.
 
The other thing is alcohol has the deepest roots in human society. Sure it's psychoactive but it was once the only way to drink water without the risk of getting sick. This was party due to the boiling of water to brew beer but they didn't know that until pasteurization was developped. It was also seen as a way of preserving food calories used in religious ceremonies an antiseptic and these uses have been around for a while.

All of that leads to a general social acceptance of alcohol based largely on the fact humans across the world have had access and have used it both for its known properties and associated spiritual ones. This is unlike any drug because everyone discovered the rotting fruit and bread they had to eat to not starve gave them a strange sense of well being, even animals notice it.

I think this is why alcohol is here to say, it isn't like anything else in the world... then the Europeans invented distillation that's probably when alcohol got more menacing but it is still the only substance with its unique history and scope of use.
 
essentially

they dont have to explain why something is legal, only if it is illegal. much easier to lie that way
 
Right, they don't need to say why they don't ban something, only why they do.
I'm glad they don't get involved with alcohol. Alcohol is already way more expensive than it's production costs due to the taxes, but I'm pretty sure it would be much more expencive if it was illegal. And if there are low quality alcohol products now, imagine the situation with bilions of people around the world strugling to get a bottle.
I think it will never be baned because it's very popular and socially accepted,(I mean, come on, people love it since the ancient times),and more important there is a trillions of dollars industry on it. No one would have the power to stand against it.
Plus, once they tried it to ban it in the USA it was maybe the biggest failure of all times, except the mazino line, maybe.

I mean, if even islam didn't manage to throw alcohol out of the society, nothing will.
 
szuko000 said:
The other thing is alcohol has the deepest roots in human society. Sure it's psychoactive but it was once the only way to drink water without the risk of getting sick. This was party due to the boiling of water to brew beer but they didn't know that until pasteurization was developped. It was also seen as a way of preserving food calories used in religious ceremonies an antiseptic and these uses have been around for a while.

All of that leads to a general social acceptance of alcohol based largely on the fact humans across the world have had access and have used it both for its known properties and associated spiritual ones. This is unlike any drug because everyone discovered the rotting fruit and bread they had to eat to not starve gave them a strange sense of well being, even animals notice it.

I think this is why alcohol is here to say, it isn't like anything else in the world... then the Europeans invented distillation that's probably when alcohol got more menacing but it is still the only substance with its unique history and scope of use.
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The same reasoning is applicable to some other drugs used since the dawn of time. Think tobacco, coffee, cannabis, opium. It's just that I think it happened so that cannabis, opium, and some others were never as popular among Westerners as alcohol, so they had no problem banning those when they saw how "dangerous" they were, especially fuelled by scaremongering propaganda aimed at discriminating the Chinese and blacks in US.
 
Not entirely true as all those drugs are regional alcohol is not. Also alcohol would be discovered by a means of needing to eat the fermented food thus adding an air of mystery as to why these "spirits" in the food got you intoxicated.

Sure it has to do with individual ideas of drug and substance use but you can't over look alcohols roots through out human society.
 
I agree on the point that alcohol is more global/universal, but my point was that the same rationale could be applied to other drugs/preparations that have been used for thousands of years.

Correct me if I'm wrong in my assumption that the massive drug prohibition came originally from the US, which was at the time a mainly alcohol-oriented society, as far as recreational drug use went. Nobody really thought about banning opium because of its dangers in parts of the world where its use was most widespread, or banning cannabis for same things. The way I see it, the US/West sort of forced the rest of the world to follow suit in banning those substances, while alcohol, tobacco, and coffee (favorite substances of Westerners) were exempt from it.

Also don't forget that alcohol has been a big part of the Muslim society, or their predecessors anyway. Didn't stop them from banning alcohol.
 
belligerent drunk said:
I agree on the point that alcohol is more global/universal, but my point was that the same rationale could be applied to other drugs/preparations that have been used for thousands of years.

Also don't forget that alcohol has been a big part of the Muslim society, or their predecessors anyway. Didn't stop them from banning alcohol.
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I agree that prohibition is a man made thing, obviously, and as such it doesnt need to be fully logical. My argument is more about how ingrained in society alcohol is. As you stated prohibition came from the west (more or less i would imagine) and alcohol was tolerated in the west. My point is alcohol was tolerated in the west due to its abundance though out human society, we were already accustom to alcohol being everywhere. Alcohol is unique in that if you leave sugars in a liquid solution alcohol has a tendency to be created without any additional energy or technique, all i am saying is that prevalence lead to it being in the western culture early which impacted our view of it in society and made it so we were more accepting of it.

Yes you can say other drug were used but you can not say they can be made by leaving fruit in water or that you preserve the calories found within by converting to alcohol. The idea that anyone anywhere can make it with no training or even planning makes it different.
 
Some drug users complain, that their doc is illegal, while alcohol is legal and way more bad/dangerous then their doc. But from a harm reduction perspective, alcohol should legal at first! Illegal - high prove - alcohol is extremely dangerous, because of methanol - just see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_methanol_poisoning_incidents.

Yes, alcohol is damaging society. But illegal alcohol would do even more than most other drugs combined.
 
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belligerent drunk said:
I agree on the point that alcohol is more global/universal, but my point was that the same rationale could be applied to other drugs/preparations that have been used for thousands of years.

Correct me if I'm wrong in my assumption that the massive drug prohibition came originally from the US, which was at the time a mainly alcohol-oriented society, as far as recreational drug use went. Nobody really thought about banning opium because of its dangers in parts of the world where its use was most widespread, or banning cannabis for same things. The way I see it, the US/West sort of forced the rest of the world to follow suit in banning those substances, while alcohol, tobacco, and coffee (favorite substances of Westerners) were exempt from it.

Also don't forget that alcohol has been a big part of the Muslim society, or their predecessors anyway. Didn't stop them from banning alcohol.
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Tobbaco and coffee are favourite subtances world wide. I don't think there are many places where people don't smoke or drink coffee. Except England maybe, because they drink tea all the time.
 
szuko000 said:
Yes you can say other drug were used but you can not say they can be made by leaving fruit in water or that you preserve the calories found within by converting to alcohol. The idea that anyone anywhere can make it with no training or even planning makes it different.
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Growing psychoactive plants isn't that complicated either to be fair. Again, same principle can be applied to psychoactive plants - people eat what they think is just food, and get high instead.
 
belligerent drunk said:
Growing psychoactive plants isn't that complicated either to be fair. Again, same principle can be applied to psychoactive plants - people eat what they think is just food, and get high instead.
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But your missing the point people could make alcohol before farming by letting food rot... growing plants was perhaps one of the biggest achievements of man don't belittle it ;)
 
Alcohol can cause liver disease is dangerous so it's safer to legalize (people less likelu to abuse something toxic) the problem with Kratom or opiates it's that it's too good and the dea don't want you to have too much fun. The main reason is simply this: " One must not have too much fun in life. Kf you do, you must suffer-"- DEA . If I was dea, I might as well illegalize feeling euphoric. Got a job promotion? You're going to jail for 24 hours buddy. We don't want you to experience that natural high from life. Or from anything at all. Just had sex and smoked a cigaretre? An officer will come ask how you're feeling. If you say "good". Off to jail buddy!
 
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Everyone I know has a blind spot when it comes to alcohol--just look at the way we always say, "drugs and alcohol" or "hard drugs" or "addictive drugs", leaving alcohol out of that definition. Why? Because that hard drug is legal and being marketed to us 24/7. The fact is that prohibition of any substance is just adding a heavy layer of harm to whatever potential harm the substance may have. The DEA is founded on the concept of prohibition. Best book on the subject: Chasing the Scream by Johan Hari.
 
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