Alcohol Should Be Banned

I hate alcohol. it winds me up how people socialise by pouring poison down their mouths. It changes them and people are talking to a different version of them. Its really only around so government can make money. I hate that, if it was found out about now, it would be illegal due to health and safety

I thank my opponent for starting this debate. I will first clarify some definitions, then let my opponent go into their opening arguments.

Alcohol - any beverage which contains ethanol for the purpose of consumption. This excludes ethanol based fuels and cleansers.

Ban - "Officially or legally prohibit." [1]

I will likely address this from both a libertarian rights perspective as well as a utilitarian perspective, but that really depends upon my opponent's arguments.

[1] http://www.google.com...

Thank you for the definitions. I would like to view this from a utilitarian point of view, at first at least. People will be unhappy at first, as the alcohol will be gone but they will start to see improvements in time.

1. Less crime. Things will be more calm

2. People can socialise in other ways, sports, cinema...endless possibilities

3. I dont want to socialise with someone for eho they are when they drink alcohol, I want to socialise with themfor who they really are

Thanks :)

I thank my opponent for his quick response. I will address his three points and move into a counter argument. It should be noted that my opponent stated that people will be unhappy at first, but improvements will be seen over time.

1) Less crime. Things will be more calm.

This is a curious claim to make. I have a feeling that my opponent may be leading somewhere, but I will address as normal and not try to predict (i.e. setup strawmen) where he is going. Of course, I will first point out the USA's first attempt at prohibition, which began in 1920. Now, according to my opponent's logic, we should see a sharpe spike of increased crime right as alcohol is made illegal, followed by the crime slowly dropping each year as people accepted the law.

However, what we see is something entirely different. From the date Prohibition takes effect, the murder rate in US cities continually grows year after year [1]. And once prohibition is removed in 1933, we see the murder rate start plummeting back down. This shows that when people disagree with a law (in large numbers) they don't just get mad for awhile, they get mad and stay mad and get madder. From a utilitarian point of view, this would need to be factored in, that if alcohol is banned, murder rates will increase for a long time and remain high for a long time.

2) People can socialise in other ways, sports, cinema...endless possibilities

People can socialise in ways other than going to the movies. Does that mean that movies can be banned? Simply because there are alternatives, does not mean that the original option is any more or less moral.

3) I dont want to socialise with someone for eho they are when they drink alcohol, I want to socialise with themfor who they really are.

This is a personal opinion and so has no bearing on what a national policy should be.

Now that refutations are done with, I shall move on to counter arguments.

A) Banning alcohol will not stop consumption

Prohibition taught us an interesting lesson. While it is true that during prohibition, alcohol consumption greatly dropped (and so, prohibition could be viewed as a success), it did not stop consumption and it increased crime. This is likely because those that continued to drink were the individuals that were willing to comit crimes for their booze. As such, the only people that were taken of their booze were those that were law abiding, and likely were law abiding, good natured people before hand. All it really did was take the people that could drink and be responsible and took away the drink. For those that could not, they continued to drink.

This is evident by the increased crime over that time frame [1].

B) Banning alcohol will hurt the economy.

Alcohol sales generate over $5.7 billion a year in taxes for the federal government [2], and that is not including the income tax on employees that work in the alcohol industry, nor the income tax of the alcohol companies. In 2005, the global alcohol industry was estimated to be over $150 billion [3]. In the US, 1.78 million jobs are tied to our beer industry alone (that doesn't count our hard liquor or wines), which results in over $54 billion in wages to those employees [3]. Banning alcohol would remove most of that (all of the tax revenue and most of the jobs).

C) Moderate drinking is healthy

There have been many studies that show that frequent, moderate drinking, is actually healthier than abstaining from alcohol altogether [4][5][6].

D) Regulations are superior to an outright ban

From what is shown, we can see that the problem is not with alcohol itself, but with particular individuals that drink it. Namely those that are not responsible drinkers. As such, regulations which allow for responsible drinking, while not allowing or punishing irresponsible drinking (binge drinking, drunk driving, etc) would be a better option. It tells people that they can still drink so long as they do it responsibly, and so that will create an incentive for individuals to be more responsible.

Since that yeilds the most good for society, that is the ideal utilitarian method. If we go from a libertarian rights method, the argument is simply that since I am the sole owner of my body, only I have a say on what can be put into my body (alcohol, in this case) and the government has no moral authority, nor right, to prevent me from doing so.

[1] http://library.thinkquest.org...
[2] http://www.taxpolicycenter.org...
[3] http://www.icap.org...
[4] http://jama.ama-assn.org...
[5] http://www.sciencedirect.com...
[6] http://www.sciencedirect.com...

Well, my opponent has forfeited his last round. I hope that all is well with my opponent and wish him luck in future debates. I will extend my arguments and pass this through to the voting.