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September 29, 2010 at 4:09 pm #704382
austinMemberThe problem with that analogy DP is that with legalizing the pot you’re talking about increased control (full unregulated legalization of cannabis is a pipe dream), while putting liquor in grocery stores decreases the government control of the substance. The cannabis market is currently in a state of anarchy with occasional police interdiciton while the booze market is fairly locked down. Two opposite ends of the spectrum.
Also, as one may be aware, abusing mj and booze have very different effects on the human body and mind from one another, it’s an apples to oranges comparison from that perspective.
September 29, 2010 at 5:17 pm #704383
JoBParticipantAustin
thanks for stepping in there… i couldn’t agree more with your statements
DP
legalizing and controlling marijuana would do a great deal to cut down on the violence surrounding the marketing of marijuana.
and go a long ways towards emptying our prisons…
that one looks like a win win to me.
alcohol is already accessible enough to cause some pretty serious problems. we don’t need to pass laws to make it more accessible.
maplesyrup..
You refute the statistics linking alcohol availability with violence with the information that as a whole Seattle has a much lower unemployment rate than Camden, NJ…
while ignoring that there are sections of Seattle whose unemployment rate equals that of Camden and that this wouldn’t apply only to the wealthier areas of Seattle… but to the entire state.
Should i pick a city in Washington whose unemployment rate exceeds that of Camden as an example? That’s not so difficult to do.
if you find my links broken or unconvincing… do your own research.
show me the evidence that when alcohol was made more available… violence, teen drinking, alcoholism and traffic fatalities didn’t increase.
September 29, 2010 at 5:30 pm #704384
CarsonParticipantJoB,
France. Germany. Both countries allow pretty much anyone to drink, at any age. Violence, teen abusive-drinking, alcoholism and traffic fatalities are much lower than ours. As I am sure you know, as a parent, grandparent and former teenager. The more adults tell you that you can’t do something, the more you want to do it. Supply and demand have little to no relation here.
September 29, 2010 at 5:38 pm #704385
DPMemberaustin:
Rhetorically speaking, apples do have some orange DNA in them and vice versa. They’re both cash-crop citrus fruits, for example, and they both grow on trees. So you can compare them on at least some levels. Of course, whenever you make an analogy, you run the risk of either blurring the details or bringing them out too sharply . . .
Reducing JoB’s argument to its simplest dimension, I believe that what she is saying is that increased social harm will result from booze being sold at 7-11s. While that is undeniable, the do-no-harm argument only goes so far. And, taken to its extreme, it would lead us to a totalitarian nanny state, which no one wants.
While I admit that booze at 7-11s will be bad for some, it will be good (“more good” I think) for the rest of us. For me, it’s not just a matter of convenience; it’s a matter of being treated like an adult.
What’s the value of me being treated like an adult? To a nanny, maybe nothing. To me, though, it’s a lot.
I’m willing to entertain the counter-argument, i.e., that the social cost of increased underage drinking trumps my right to be trusted with hard liquor. What I’m not willing to entertain, however, is the argument that anything that does harm cannot be tolerated. Because again, by that reasoning, you’d have to say no to a raft of proposals, including relaxing marijuana laws in any form.
—David
P.S. And speaking of . . . what makes you think that full legalization of mj is a pipe dream? That’s certainly not the way things are trending lately.
September 29, 2010 at 5:42 pm #704386
JustSarahParticipantPsst, DP – apples are not in the genus Citrus.
September 29, 2010 at 5:45 pm #704387
DPMemberSeptember 29, 2010 at 6:04 pm #704388
JustSarahParticipantTee-hee. Sorry. You really made me stop and think for a second about whether the classification of apples had changed and I hadn’t been duly informed. ;-)
I had to go verify that the Plantae kingdom hadn’t been radically restructured!
September 29, 2010 at 6:07 pm #704389
austinMemberIt’s the unregulated legalization of cannabis that some support that I believe to be unrealistic, not legalization itself. Pot won’t be legalized without age restrictions and taxes in place at the very least, which is more than exists now, which was my point. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other on increased availability of hard liquor other than that I don’t believe that a person’s opinion on it shouldn’t necessarily influence their opinion on cannabis law reform because they’re such different subjects from a non black-and-white perspective.
September 29, 2010 at 6:17 pm #704390
maplesyrupParticipantJoB I’m talking about poverty rates in Camden, not unemployment. I’m not going to research it but I’d be willing to bet that there is a strong link between high crime rates and high poverty rates. But anyway there’s a whole host of other factors that distinguish Camden from Seattle (and the rest of the state) that would render it a fairly bad example.
But beyond that I see things from a different angle when it comes to regulating behavior. We should be regulating the behavior of criminals (eg. drunk drivers) and not that of the vast majority of responsible citizens who don’t break the law.
September 29, 2010 at 6:27 pm #704391
GenHillOneParticipantlegal pot = “pipe dream” – hehehe
September 29, 2010 at 10:21 pm #704392
JoBParticipantmaplesysrup…
i let myself be distracted by a non-argument:(
i went back and read the abstract you dismissed the minute you saw where the study was done.
the study in question looked at alcohol availability and crime rates within Camden, NJ and found..
“Each type of analysis showed that those areas with high alcohol outlet densities experienced more violent crime than low-density areas, after controlling for neighborhood social structure. In the multivariate regression analysis, alcohol outlet densities explained close to one fifth of the variability in violent crime rates across block groups— more than any one of the neighborhood structural variables included in the analysis. “
It doesn’t matter where the study was done.. what matters is that the determining factor for violence was availability of alcohol.
As for whose behavior is “regulated” because alcohol is sold in state regulated stores instead of being available to steal off grocery store shelves… I am pretty it is the criminals we are regulating.
Since we regulate criminal behavior for public safety..
do i assume that you think it is a worthwhile trade-off to be less safe so that you can pick up your hard liquor with your eggs?
I don’t think so. I don’t think the family of the man beaten to death in Roxhill Park thinks so and i don’t think anyone who has ever lost a loved one to a drunk driver will agree either.
I didn’t just jump to conclusions on this one as i am a strong proponent of individual rights… but the evidence doesn’t lie.
while you vote for convenience you also vote for increased violence, teen drinking, alcoholism and traffic fatalities…. and the increased public costs associated with them.
if the ballot measure were printed that way it would be a pretty tough sell… wouldn’t it?
DP..
hard alcohol is available in Washington now..
in controlled environments where it is difficult to steal and where valid ID is required to purchase it.
most teens get their alcohol from their parent’s liquor cabinets.. the same place they get prescription drugs they sell and abuse….
not from the local convenience store…
right now… they can only get beer and cigarettes at the convenience store … if only they would buy more contraceptives while they are there :(
September 30, 2010 at 12:42 am #704393
DPMemberSo does violent crime correlate more strongly with, say, shots of Stoly than with Mickey’s widemouths?
Someone please ‘splain me that one . . .
September 30, 2010 at 1:36 am #704394
JoBParticipantDP
there is this little label on your alcohol which tells you what the proof is.. that is how strong the alcohol is in your drink…
i suspect how shots of stoly would compare with mickey’s widemouths would depend upon the volume consumed…
wouldn’t you?
September 30, 2010 at 3:44 am #704395
maplesyrupParticipantJoB I don’t know how exactly you can control for an almost 40% poverty rate, unemployment rates, education levels, availability/quality of education, single parent rates, nutritional intake, ethnicity, availability of shopping outlets, public transportation availability, gun laws, and other stress inducers that contribute to the misery index, but if you can do that and conclude that the outcome of availability of liquor in Camden will produce similar results in Seattle, then I guess there’s no way I’m going to convince you that we’re different. I’ll just say that I’m not buying it.
The guy who was beaten in Rox Hill (RIP) was beaten by a career criminal who had been drinking beer (allegedly). How is hard liquor in a Safeway going to alter that outcome?
September 30, 2010 at 4:16 am #704396
JoBParticipantmaplesyrup..
that study compared different areas of a city that was all experiencing the same
“almost 40% poverty rate, unemployment rates, education levels, availability/quality of education, single parent rates, nutritional intake, ethnicity, availability of shopping outlets, public transportation availability, gun laws, and other stress inducers that contribute to the misery index,”
and found that the the single largest contributing indicator of the incidence.. not the existence.. of violence.. on a block to block basis… by a factor of 20%.. was the availability of alcohol.
I’d say that’s pretty convincing evidence.
My hope is that one day we don’t have similar research in seattle showing similar results.
Right now there is no basis for comparison because hard alcohol sales are regulated and controlled.
As for the Rox Hill beating.. he was not beaten by a single career criminal but by more than one if the testimony we have heard is correct…
It sounds as though the main perpetrator was still sober enough to realize that he should leave after stomping that poor man… but as you increase the liquor content the likelihood of remaining sober enough not to go looking for another victim decreases exponentially…
That mob mentality fueled by hard liquor is the bane of police forces unlucky enough to be stationed where spring breakers binge drink and has been the precipitating factor in more than one student murder. those kids are rarely career criminals.
Binge drinking is so out of control on our college campuses that my niece matter-of-factly told her parents about taking roommates to the ER for alcohol poisoning.
do you really think risking that in our high schools is a good idea?
kids will steal alcohol from stores..
right now all they can steal is beer or wine…
stealing a beer is a lot less dangerous than stealing a fifth or two or three..
September 30, 2010 at 4:55 am #704397
DPMemberIn response to my question about how alcohol-related crime correlates to the kind of alcoholic beverage consumed, JoB said:
there is this little label on your alcohol which tells you what the proof is.. that is how strong the alcohol is in your drink…
i suspect how shots of stoly would compare with mickey’s widemouths would depend upon the volume consumed…
wouldn’t you?
OK, so let me see if I got this straight.
Stoly, at 40% alcohol, is about seven times as strong as Mickey’s, at 6% alcohol. Therefore, a person drunk on Stoly is seven times as likely to commit a crime as someone drunk on Mickey’s.
Is that what you’re saying, JoB?
September 30, 2010 at 3:33 pm #704398
JoBParticipantDP…
no.. that is not what i am saying.
what i am saying is that if you follow the statistics… a person drunk on stoly or any other high proof hard liquor is more likely to commit violence than a person drunk on beer….
perhaps that’s because if you get that drunk on beer you become more concerned about the availability of restrooms than seeing what trouble you can get into …
as i grow older i pay more attention to those things…
or maybe it has something to do with the way various amounts of alcohol react in your brain?
Or maybe with the rate of assimilation?
I don’t know.
but if you want to investigate that trend, i have a couple of suggestions for you..
you could ride along with a policeman for a night or two… or spend some time in one of the emergency rooms in the less affluent neighborhoods.
Or try your own test…
drink 7 bottles of Mickey’s the first night and ask yourself what you want to do now.
then drink one shot of stoly the second night and ask yourself the same question.
violence aside.. i am guessing you are more ready to go out and party on a shot of stoly than on 7 mickey’s.
Why do you think that is?
September 30, 2010 at 4:27 pm #704399
WorldCitizenParticipantJoB:
Thats not right. Drunk is drunk. You can get drunk faster on liquor than beer, but let’s not kid ourselves here. If you’re out to get drunk and not to just enjoy a cocktal or two, then it makes little difference how that happens. Bathroom availability is but a mere convenience.
I would be interested to see the correlation between education level and the alcohol consumption rate. I would guess that plays a larger role in it’s levels. And I’m just going to go out on a limb here and say the education level of Seattle redidents is generally higher then Camden.
September 30, 2010 at 5:53 pm #704400
JoBParticipantworld citizen…
drunk is drunk…
but it takes you a lot longer to get drunk drinking a 6 pack of mickeys than it does a shot of stoly…
always assuming that you would drink only one shot of stoly in the same time period.
probably a bad assumption to make..
but it is possible…
and while you are drinking that 6 pack of mickeys your body is working hard to process the alcohol you are consuming..
so actual fact .. you would pretty much have to guzzle all 6+ beers without stopping in between to maintain the same alcohol content in your body as you finished the last to get the same “drunk” you would get drinking one shot of stoly.
Do you begin to see a correlation here?
Let’s go beyond it.
If a kid steals a 6 pack of micheys they are going to drink the 6 pack..
if they steal a pint of stoly they are going to drink the pint.
do you think that would make them more impaired?
as for that education level thing…
it doesn’t seem to be working well in our nation’s colleges and universities…
binge drinking is up and it is fueled with hard liquor not the beer of my college days…
no surprise that alcohol poisoning is also up.
and those are our “educated” kids…
I listened to my 40 year old daughter defend her 20 year old cousins who are earning their drinking chops at college instead of concentrating on their education because she did it herself and she turned out ok.
yes.. she has done well professionally…
but rationalizing the abuse of alcohol doesn’t change the health and societal risks from binge drinking.
habits made at school die hard.
I think the only thing education levels change is the ability to justify your opinion.
My less educated friends would have to rely on common sense and are likely to come up with only one comment when i state that easy access to hard liquor creates more drinking problems than access to beer and wine.
DUH
As an argument, i will admit that lacks panache…
but still… it speaks adequately to the point.
September 30, 2010 at 6:10 pm #704401
datamuseParticipantSo you regulate outlet density. I found a very thorough review article from the American Journal of Preventative Medicine (abstract here) that suggests that doing this MIGHT decrease consumption and alcohol-related harm. Its findings do tend to support the two articles JoB posted (the second link goes to a book review, you might want to fix that).
However, a couple of things:
– the review, which analyzed multiple studies of the effect of outlet density (i.e., how many alcohol vendors you have in a given area) on consumption and harm in the U.S. and Sweden, studies the effects concerning alcohol in general. No correlations concerning hard liquor as opposed to beer and wine are observed.
– nowhere does the article recommend state-run monopolies as a solution to the problem, since this has no inherent effect on outlet density. (Outlet density varies widely even among states with state-run monopolies; Iowa, for example, has 7.25 liquor outlets for every 1000 people. I guess there’s not much else to do there?)
My point here is that there’s no earthly reason that privatization HAS to mean that there are more places to buy alcohol. In fact, section 31 of the initiative specifically states that municipalities can regulate where liquor is sold.
The initiative effectively turns the LCB into a licensing and enforcement agency, which strikes me as appropriate. Will my own purchases of alcohol go up? Probably, but that’s because the selection at the state-run stores frankly sucks. A private enterprise in Seattle specializing in Irish whiskeys would be outstanding.
As to your question, WorldCitizen, I skimmed a few studies addressing that issue and you’re right, a lower education level does tend to correlate with higher alcohol consumption. Several of those studies emphasize, though, that it’s not so much the lower education level as the likely correlative lower socioeconomic status that causes the problem. In this country, the more education you have, the higher your socioeconomic position is likely to be. The higher your position is, the less material stress you likely have.
There again, though, it does not necessarily follow that the state running stores that sell certain varieties of liquor helps anything.
September 30, 2010 at 6:12 pm #704402
JustSarahParticipantWhat kind of kid drinks a pint of Stoli (Stolichnaya) vodka? Scratch that – what kind of kid drinks a pint of Stoli and then goes out to commit violent acts? That kid would be lucky to not be dead or at least comatose by that point.
Oy; apparently I had a mild childhood.
September 30, 2010 at 6:18 pm #704403
JoBParticipantsarah..
a kid steals what is most accessible and easy to hide.
they don’t drink the entire pint.. but instead of sharing a six pack with their buddies.. they share the pint.
thus.. everyone consumes more :(
and on that note.. i am going to leave this virtual community and check our the world outside my window.
wasting sunshine is my idea of sin.
October 1, 2010 at 5:00 pm #704404
JoBParticipantdatamuse…
there is nothing that says that privatization has to increase availability.. and yet if availability isn’t the goal why are so many grocery chains investing heavily in promoting this?
you are right.. the studies all research alcohol..
not the type of alcohol consumed..
but when the alcoholic content of a beverage rises.. the level of intoxication inevitably follows.
According to DPs stats.. which i didn’t check.. you have to drink 6 Mickey’s…. the Cadillac of alcohol delivery for cheap beer … to equal the alcoholic content of one shot of stoly.
As for that illusive store that stocks a wide range of rich irish whiskeys.. that is completely possible now within the current licensing system.
so why do we NEED to change a system that is working for us and is delivering income to our state’s social programs?
I think this link provides food for thought.. not only because of the points it makes but because of the long list of research articles sourced for those points…
http://www.marininstitute.org/alcohol_policy/violence.htm
If we are going to talk money..
lets talk about the real cost..
the total cost of these measures.
October 1, 2010 at 5:14 pm #704405
datamuseParticipantJob, whether availability is due to a state-run shop or a private enterprise says nothing in and of itself about how many places you can buy it. Grocery stores are subject to zoning regulations and laws governing what can be sold where, just like any other business. They may well lobby to increase the legal density of suppliers, but that’s a separate albeit related issue.
Of COURSE grocery stores want to sell alcohol. They’re in the business of making money, and this is a way for them to do that. I’m not sure what’s so inherently troubling about this.
but when the alcoholic content of a beverage rises.. the level of intoxication inevitably follows.
Really? Inevitably? Can you point to some evidence for that? (Anecdotes are not evidence. The plural of anecdote is not data.)
I notice that the site that you link to has a stated and obvious agenda, and cites no studies more recent than 2003. I’m in favor of sources that don’t consider a question closed at the outset.
I’m not quarreling with what it says, though. The very article that I cited comes to similar conclusions re: the prevalence of liquor outlets and alcohol-related crime. But let me also point out that nowhere did I argue that the number of liquor outlets ought to be increased. I actually do believe that there should be clearly defined regulations as to how many liquor outlets can be in a given area.
However, I don’t believe that it should be the government running them. Selling liquor is not something that I consider the purpose of government. Maintaining civic infrastructure, providing necessary public services, maintaining social order, and creating and enforcing laws are some of its duties. I really don’t see where selling booze comes into it.
October 1, 2010 at 5:40 pm #704406
JustSarahParticipantWell, obviously the level of intoxication inevitably increases with hard alcohol, DataMuse, because hard alcohol has a higher percentage of alcohol, and yet everyone drinks the same volume regardless of whether the ABV is 5%, 15%, or 50%. For example, if I get home from a long day at work and want to kick back with a cold beer, only to discover I’m out of beer, I’ll choose instead to poor a pint glass of nice cold vodka.
Thus, my intoxication is inevitably higher than if I had only had beer.
(For the sarcasm-impaired, this was written with tongue very firmly planted in cheek.)
In all seriousness, though, it’s not *what* one drinks that’s the problem, it’s the quantity and the person’s attitude toward alcohol. There is nothing inherently more dangerous about someone drinking a 1 oz. shot of 80-proof tequila vs. someone drinking a 6 oz. glass of pink zinfandel; both contain approximately the same amount of alcohol, and one can become terribly inebriated from too much of either. The demonization of “spirits” needs to end.
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