Horse is already long gone from the barn with alcohol. You know this and you are smarter than that. Legalizing heroin or meth is a fucking horrible idea unless your goal is to weed out the junkies. Then have at it. I lean libertarian when it comes to drugs. As king as it doesn't affect me, have at it. But as soon as I have to pay into some social program to help these junkies, I'm out. For what it's worth, weed is legal where I live. Went to a concert not that long ago and smoked up without a second thought (in the parking lot.)
The thing that will effectively ban alcohol is when we get good numbers on longevity and develop the pharmaceuticals to begin really extending lifespan. At 60 my friends who were big drinkers are falling off a cliff in terms of aging. My friends who were not are spread out all over the curve.
Liver damage, skin damage, premature greying, increased chances of dementia, basically a potpourri of premature aging. Also increased risk of advanced diabetic symptoms because alcohol turns into sugar as it is processed, damaging many bodily systems in the process. Quitting drinking in your early 40's gives you a leg up on life at 60.
I’m not advocating refusal of treatment, If they seek help they deserve the same help every other citizen is entitled to but until they seek it on their own let them be. Arresting junkies will never stop the flow of drugs. I think we’ve proven that already.
Speaking of drugs, Verizon wants me to believe that I am getting 4 bars of 5G network in Ennis fucking Texas. The only thing that makes it a "5G" phone is the lengths at which they will go to lie about the signal you are getting.
The thing that's scary to me is that we're redefining aging as we go and most of the people alive today probably have a pretty good chance to make it to 120 if they find the golden path 21st century civilization is creating to attain that goal. The problem is that it will take some money and some very careful planning to get there and most people are short on both sides of that equation. We're going to have a lot of angry first world 70 year olds in 40 years or so. The Granpappy Terrorist Groups.
This is happening all over the country. Whether it would change for the better if drugs were legal is open to debate. Overdose Deaths From Meth, Fentanyl Rising Dramatically In San Diego County https://www.kpbs.org/news/health/2021/09/21/overdose-deaths-meth-fentanyl-rising-dramatically
Pretty sure I read a couple of months ago that the average life span for Americans actually declined for the first time in decades this past year. And that's with no major wars going on. 120 seems pretty aggressive, especially with our new found trend of ignoring science and real medicine in favor of social media advertised therapies.
You'd have to have breakdowns of the various socio-economic age brackets to know where the real impact of the decline in life span occurred last year. I'm going to guess that most of the decline was in the 65+ age bracket, particularly the segment of that bracket living on socially fixed income (as opposed to investment based fixed income), and that if you averaged the decline there vs other groups you'd find that older Americans living on a socially fixed income actually had like a 3-5 year decline in life expectancy in 2020 whereas groups 64 and less and groups living on investment income were much less impacted. In 2021 the loss of life expectancy will also strike the 45-64 group fairly heavily, maybe even more than the overall 65+ group for 2021. None of this will much impact the group of Americans that might well make it to 120, most of whom are under 30 at this point and fairly affluent.
