If you want to claim that the mind-altering properties of alcohol are closer to those of a hot meal than of illegal drugs, you go ahead and look silly; any reader who's ever drunk enough alcohol to impair judgment and ability knows how presposterous your claim is.
Alcohol can and has been used for centuries as a food without being used to impair judgment and ability even if often abused.
Alcohol can and has been used for centuries without being used to impair judgment and ability, sure - but as a food?! Please provide evidence for a tradition of using alcohol to meet dietary caloric requirements.
And the fact that alcohol is often used to impair judgment and ability leaves you with a very thin reed on which to hang your claimed distinction from other drugs - particularly when one notes that impairment was the whole purpose of alcohol use when that mind-altering drug was illegal. (Or do you think many patrons of illegal speakeasies were there only to drink ceremonial toasts?)
No, I don't favor a Prohibition Era style ban on alcohol for the reasons above but I have no trouble at all with tightening restrictions on it far more than what exists.
What further restrictions do you support?
I have a right to work beside someone who is not shaking and sweating from the meth he took so he could work eighteen hours straight,
You fabricate "rights" as well as any liberal - your employer may hire whoever they choose, and you have the right to work beside them or quit, period.
I have a right to use the city park I've paid for without having to step around used needles and condoms.
It'll be much easier to eliminate drug use in parks if users have someplace legal to use.
I have a right not to have my neighborhood turned into a cesspool like parts of San Francisco is.
Depends what you mean by "cesspool" - I support local ordinances against public intoxication, loitering, and eyesore properties.
What other obligations do you claim that free men have?
Only two very broad obligations: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.
Government may require citizens to love God?!
I made no such claim and it's obvious that I didn't. Why claim that I did?
“Government may require citizens to love God?!”
No. But a moral and self regulating populace is the only way a society can prosper. That lack is destroying this one.
The question was not about governments nor was my answer so why are you saying that?
“Alcohol can and has been used for centuries without being used to impair judgment and ability, sure - but as a food?! Please provide evidence for a tradition of using alcohol to meet dietary caloric requirements.”
It's taken as part of the meal, it's being used as a food. It might be mixed into food or drank but it's part of the meal, being used as food.
“Please provide evidence for a tradition of using alcohol to meet dietary caloric requirements.”
That's silly! Who has ever sat down to eat with the thought of: “I must meet my dietary caloric requirements.”
Devotees of Weight Watchers...maybe.
“You fabricate “rights” as well as any liberal - your employer may hire whoever they choose, and you have the right to work beside them or quit, period”
No they may not hire whomever they choose as they have a responsibility not to allow impaired workers on the job. Companies don't do drug testing just to annoy workers, they have both moral and legal obligations. And no one has the right to expect me to give up my livelihood so they can indulge their dangerous habits.
The invention of rights is the business of so-called libertarians not me. Killing infants before birth, bimbos taking their clothes off as free speech, advocating child rape, pornography, homosexual displaying their vile practices in public parades...”victimless’ crimes.
“It'll be much easier to eliminate drug use in parks if users have someplace legal to use”
What? Restrict someone’s right to use drugs in a public park? If drug use is a legal right and victimless why not in public parks?
“And the fact that alcohol is often used to impair judgment and ability leaves you with a very thin reed on which to hang your claimed distinction from other drugs - particularly when one notes that impairment was the whole purpose of alcohol use when that mind-altering drug was illegal”
Not so, not so. Wine at meals and celebrations has been a tradition long before there was a U.S. or Prohibition. Did you think those people suddenly headed to a speakeasy to get drunk just because of Prohibition?
On alcohol. I haven't anything specific in mind, any regime has strengths and weaknesses. And in any case self regulation born of recognition of our obligations to our fellows to not degrade the society they must share is at the heart of all law.
“It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.”
(Thomas Jefferson 1816)