Why do young women in Britain drink themselves to oblivion?

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by kira, Oct 9, 2011.

  1. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Observably so.

    The women apparently are drinking by choice.

    The actual reasoning and circumstances that lead to such choice are likely as variable as the women themselves.

    As a late teenager, I recall one or two occasions of over-indulgence which resulted in a long commune with nature, recycling the contents of my stomach, in privacy.

    I was taught that one is responsible for one's choices and consequences.

    Lack of experience with alcohol and it's effects on my biology were the precipitating factors in my first negative encounters with alcohol as a socializing substance.

    Negative reinforcement only took a couple of times before I learned to drink at my own pace, not to mix drinks and to say 'No thanks, I'm fine.'

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    I can only guess at the reasons that some of these women would care to engage in such conduct on a regular basis. Their pain threshold must be considerably higher than mine, or the pain they are running from must be even greater, perhaps.....:shrug:
     
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  3. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Not really, since they did not warn anyone they were putting the methanol in industrial alcohol (other than the manufacturers, of course.) The prevailing attitude was "well, if they don't find out, it's not our problem; they're doing something illegal anyway."

    Again, no. The people drinking illegally were the closest to the intentional deaths. The government (who intentionally poisoned the product) are culpable as well, though.

    For another example, imagine a local police force erects a temporary concrete barrier in the road to stop people for sobriety tests. The speed limit is 55, and they position it around a blind turn so that someone driving 55 will be able to stop in time.

    A driver comes around the corner doing 70, cannot stop in time, and hits the barrier. He and his family are killed. The police state "well, we warned people we'd be doing sobriety checkpoints this month, so they had all the warning they needed." You could claim that the driver, by breaking the law, bore most of the responsibility - but the government bears a significant amount as well. Indeed, one could easily imagine criminal proceedings against the police chief who proposed such a deadly barrier.
     
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  5. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    I think that the reasons for enforcing the illegality of a substance or activity play a part in establishing degrees of culpability.

    From Wiki:

    There is a history of countries prohibiting alcohol on moral reasons, but if this prohibition was with the intention to save grain for war effort, then the situation is mora akin to when during combat, the officer in charge shoots and kills a deserting soldier.

    Such shooting is nor murder, is not illegal, serves as a threat to others and an exhortation to continue the battle.
     
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  7. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    ...however, Carrie Nation and the Christian Temperance Union were NOT trying to 'save grain for the war effort', they were imposing their "Christian" morality on others who disagreed with them.

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    This is common knowledge.

    She cried in the balcony when alcohol Prohibition was finally repealed in 1933, many years after WW 1 had ended.

    I haven't heard much about officers shooting deserters during battles recently. At least not in any current American wars. Could you please cite an example of this behavior?

    No. If you deliberately adulterate something with poison that you are aware is going to be ingested by other people - whether or not you agree with them doing that - then you are responsible for the deaths - period. What they were doing before you interfered would not kill them. The change you made killed them. You wear it.
     
  8. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Like I said:

    There is a history of countries prohibiting alcohol on moral reasons,
    but if this prohibition was with the intention to save grain for war effort ...



    This was also the theme of the book and film Paths of glory, made after a true story.


    In wartime, different principles apply than in times of peace.
     
  9. Cifo Day destroys the night, Registered Senior Member

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    False. The Volstead Act explicitly required the manufacturers of industrial ethanol to make their products undrinkable, thus the public (along with the manufacturers) had good reason that any alcoholic beverage they bought would be undrinkable.
    Please provide a legitimate cite for the above-stated "attitude" (blogs don't count).
    True, in a sense. Because it was not illegal to possess or drink alcoholic beverages, it was actually the purchasers of alcoholic beverages who had no reasonable expectation that any such products were inspected for safety or health purposes; besides the public already had a reasonable expectation that any alcoholic beverage they bought would be undrinkable. (See above.)
    Yes, although — once again — even though the federal government did not poison the products, the government had some responsibility, and I have said as much; however, the manufacturers certainly knew it was undrinkable, the criminal masterminds who stole/diverted the industrial ethanol also knew it was undrinkable, and so did the chemists they hired who also knew exactly what was in it.
    Here is quite an extensive article in the 15 Jan 1922 New York Times, in the early days of Prohibition about the dangers of methanol in unlawfully purchased alcoholic beverages. Thus, the idea that the public was grossly unaware of the dangers of methanol-tainted alcoholic beverages is — well — a myth.

    Please note: This subject matter has gone off topic and become repetitious, and I will not post on it here again.
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No. The process of "renaturing" denatured alcohol was well established (although selling the result of the process was of course illegal) and thus a member of the public had evidence that the alcohol produced from the process was safe to drink. Indeed, he saw such alcohol consumed regularly with no ill effect - at least at first, while the denaturing products were relatively easy to remove.

    The government did not like that people were making safe-to-drink alcohol from denatured alcohol, so they devised a new method to denature it - one that made it deadly. They did not warn the public about this addition because, in their mind, they were already scofflaws and deserved whatever happened to them as a result of their lawless activity.

    Sure. New York City Medical Examiner legitimate enough?

    "The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol . . .yet it continues its poisoning processes, heedless of the fact that people determined to drink are daily absorbing that poison. Knowing this to be true, the United States government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, although it cannot be held legally responsible."
     
  11. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Uh huh. Profound thought, however it does not justify the US federal government deliberately killing US citizens en mass.

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  12. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    The citizens apparently knew that the alcohol was not safe for human consumption, and they also knew it was illegal to produce, sell, buy and consume alcohol.

    Should illegal substances be made safe?
     
  13. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    Should Big Brother make 'immoral' substances deadly?
     
  14. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Should the citizens be wimps?

    That Big Brother was elected into his position. He could have just as easily been removed, if that is what the people truly desired.
    But the consumption of alcohol, spiked with methanol or not, apparently impairs people's ability to act on their desires. One more reason to do away with it.
     
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Nope. Nor should they be made deadly.

    If someone places a shipping container in the middle of a highway, and someone slams into it and dies, "well, he could have stopped if he hadn't been speeding, so I did nothing wrong putting it there" does not work as a defense.
     
  16. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    "Big Brother" (i.e. prohibition) was indeed removed.
     
  17. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    What Bill said, Sig.
     
  18. Ghost_007 Registered Senior Member

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    Don't know if this has been mentioned as I haven't read through all 6 pages but the laws regarding drinking in the UK seem to be very different from mainland Europe.

    In the UK you can't drink in public places, not in trains, not really out in the streets - as far as I am aware. I've seen the police confiscate beer from guys who seem to be just having a casual drink while on the go. They can just take your bottle or can off you.

    When in Germany, in the evenings you can smell booze in the trains and other public places, it is very different from the UK.
     
  19. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    So where's the problem?

    Other than perhaps some people thinking that democracy should come freely and require no sacrifices?
     
  20. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Remember that interpersonal disconnect I mentioned to you before elsewhere? Most of us care about other people because we are able to bond with them, to relate to them and to care for them - even if we have not even met them. This is "empathy" and it leads us to care about what happens to them. "Altruism" motivates us to discuss wrongs done to others and to try to figure out ways to lesson or eliminate those.

    When we find that the people we have elected to care for all of us (the government) have not only let us down in that, but have chosen to kill us, our brothers and sisters, our fellow citizens, without either good cause or due process under law (as explicitly detailed in our federal constitution), we get concerned that they may well do this again and some more. Thus our concern.

    I recall that you do not quite understand this aspect of human behavior, but rest assured that most others amongst us here do. While you may not share these simple sentiments, rationally it behooves you to consider that many of the rest of us do and it is important to us. I hope that this helps you to understand why we are so concerned about our government killing us - if they did it a couple of times, how are we to assure that they will not do so again?
     
  21. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Your contempt for me is duly noted.

    I also note that you might not be so sharp in analyzing moral and legal issues.
     
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Well, there was a problem - both with prohibition and the government poisoning people. Both problems were solved.

    Hmm. So sometimes democracy requires the government to kill ten thousand or so of its citizens? Interesting take.
     
  23. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    No. Sometimes, it apparently takes thousands of citizens to die before the others realize they can impeach their government.
     

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