It is amazing how governments and people accept the consumption of alcohol and have no problem with it. However cannabis and Ecstasy are illegal and viewed more negatively by most people. Sometimes it is amazing how illegal mankind is.
I would also add that social brainwashing is a big contributor to many false beliefs that many people hold, including myself.
Ah. Thanks for reminding me to download this week’s edition of The Economist.
So … the man wants to use logic and rational debate to influence public policy? WTF is he thinking? He can count himself lucky he was only fired. Back in the good ol’ days, he probably would have been crucified.
Governments like cigarettes because they don’t significantly affect the user’s state of mind (except get them addicted). Apparently, tax on a pack of 20 cigarettes in the UK now is about GBP7, which is a niiice little earner for the treasury (although I bet it still doesn’t completely offset the health-related losses to the NHS and society in general). Alcohol taxes are similar; and me being a cynical git, I can’t help wondering if the gov’t is quite happy to see minor alcohol-fuelled fights on Saturday nights because it gives the police something to do, which in turn means they can brag about how selflessly and efficiently the state is protecting us from the Forces of Evil.
Conversely, they HATE drugs like weed because they render the user incapable of turning up for a job and keeping his nose to the grindstone. That reduces the tax take, which means they have less money to start wars with countries like Afghanistan, which has been so comprehensively fucked over that there’s not much else for them to do except grow marijuana and opium.
Here’s a great chart showing how alcohol deaths dwarf those of illegal drugs.
neurobonkers.com/2011/12/22/the- … ata-fraud/
I don’t know what the numbers mean, but it looks cool.
But, oddly enough, that chart omits by far the biggest killer of all – tobacco.
Nice colors on that chart. 
This one’s impressive, too.
But, of course, we all know that. Ho hum.
Back to changing the world. . . 