by Mak Hussain

At Lincoln-Sudbury, we are all well aware of the use of alcohol among people in our age group. We have heard tales of the consequences of such decisions, ranging from inaction, to a parental scolding, to legal ramifications, to rape or death. Even if the latter two have not occurred to those around us, it would be foolish to deny that they occur in our society. In order to work towards a stable and just society, we must address these problems. For this reason, I propose work towards limiting the consumption of alcohol in our society, and ultimately, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcohol to all individuals.
While this problem is most relevant to us as teenagers, adults in our society encounter the same situations and consequences despite better judgment. Without question, many actions committed under the influence - vandalism, rape, drunk driving, or even homicide - are detrimental to our society, and are sources of societal instability. The individuals cannot be held responsible for their specific action, as they are not consciously committing the act. But by drinking to the point of intoxication, they willingly sacrifice some of their self-control. They do not want or intend the final consequences of whatever inebriated decisions they make, but the act of choosing to give up control, for the sake of entertainment or social pressure, caused the end result.
Drinking to the point of intoxication is similar to making the conscious choice to loosen one’s logic, responsibility, and control over one’s action. In a sense, it is the choice to become temporarily insane. A stable society cannot rely on the decisions of those mentally incapacitated by their circumstances, be those circumstances an underdeveloped frontal lobe in children, a neural misconnection in the insane, or the mentally impaired state of someone who is drunk. As a society, we should, therefore, remove the possibility of drinkers acting in a way that hurts their environment by limiting their freedom of action, as with children and the insane.
One solution is to prevent people from being in a state where they cannot control themselves. As this applies to alcohol, in effect, society must prevent people from becoming drunk in the first place. So, in order to prevent the issues created by alcohol-induced intoxication, one needs to prevent drunkenness to the point of intoxication. It is obvious that current attempts to address this, such as the prohibition of teenage alcohol consumption and wellness education in school, are not working. Even if teenagers cannot buy alcohol, they can easily obtain it from adults who can legally buy it. Further, these laws do not prevent alcohol-related problems for adults in any way. Thus, in order to solve the issues associated with it, the ability for any individuals to get drunk, or even obtain alcohol, must be limited or prevented altogether.
Even though some adults can control themselves with a few drinks, alcohol inherently impairs judgment and encourages more drinking. Drunkenness needs to be controlled, but a law banning being drunk would effectively be useless. Further, because the intoxicating effects of alcohol work as a spectrum, rather than a random demarcation at 0.08, such a law would be either incomplete or unenforceable. Furthermore, the law cannot expect people who are given alcohol to control themselves and not become drunk. Instead, people should be required to take control when they have it; with alcohol, this point is simply before the first drink. The only feasible way to prevent drunkenness would be to prohibit alcohol entirely.
Many people believe that the prohibition of alcohol would be unnecessarily taking away drinking that does not result in harm to anyone, so this is infringing on individual rights. As demonstrated, because one cannot control the consequences after one has started drinking, the act of drinking in the first place can be seen as taking responsibility for what follows. Thus, limiting what could hurt others—last time I checked I couldn’t shoot near somebody with my eyes closed—is not an infringement of individual liberties. Precedents in American law have shown this with regards to drugs, the selling of weapons to unstable people, the use of dangerous chemicals by unauthorized people, etc. The Constitution only protects one’s civil rights when they does not infringe on others’ rights. Therefore, allowing alcohol today demonstrates an inconsistency in American policy. If one could make clear choices while drunk, that would be another situation, but this just isn’t the case.
As a society, we cannot let the ills that result from the consumption of alcohol continue to threaten our values, dignity, or even physical safety. Although these result from intoxication, we must address the source, and stop the flow from the neck of the bottle. As with anything, we need to prioritize and choose, in this case between temporary enjoyment and societal stability. Alcohol cannot be regulated and controlled once allowed at all, as shown by the ease teenagers have in obtaining alcohol. Nor does it deserve to be, unlike prescription drugs or other beneficial items with risks. Instead, our society must choose: accept alcohol and all of its negative consequences, or ban it completely. We need stability to advance as a society and a species, as even a brief study of history will show. Thus, the causes of instability - alcohol for casual drinking or otherwise - must be removed.