This is from the NCDD (National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence) website

Alcohol, more than any illegal drug, was found to be closely associated with violent crimes, including murder, rape, assault, child and spousal abuse. About 3 million violent crimes occur each year in which victims perceive the offender to have been drinking and statistics related to alcohol use by violent offenders generally show that about half of all homicides and assaults are committed when the offender, victim, or both have been drinking. Among violent crimes, with the exception of robberies, the offender is far more likely to have been drinking than under the influence of other drugs.

Hardly a surprise given alcohol is legal and easlily available. If drugs were legalised making them widely available to all you'd find a different story. Sorry but if the answer is legalise drugs then you are asking the wrong questions.

The question is why not ban alcohol

You are only making assumptions that the figures would rise if drugs were legal

So you don't think they would rise if it was made legal yet you want to ban alcohol to reduce the same figures? Yeah, that makes sense.

The way to solve a problem is not to give more people easier access to said problem!

No I didn't say it wouldn't go up, I don't know. And if drugs are to be banned based on that assumption then alcohol should be banned based on real stats. What you are doing is picking on one kind of drug, if you don't think people should take drugs, especially in public,then ban all drugs including alcohol. Alcohol is one of the only drugs that is allowed to be taken in a public place.

Here are 2 stats from UK gov

There were 3,674 drug poisoning deaths (involving both legal and illegal drugs) registered in 2015.

There were 78,000 deaths in 2014 which
were estimated to be attributed to smoking.

In the UK, in 2015 there were 8,758 alcohol-related deaths (around 14 per 100,000 people). The mortality rates are highest among people aged 55-64.

The problem is you aren't comparing like with like.

Drugs covers a whole host of substances.

Legalise Marijuana in the right circumstances? Maybe
Legalise Heroin? No under any circumstances.

Comparing smoking to class A drugs is also a mismatch.
But only in the perception. Both kill you. But people are more accepting of smoking as it is a long term thing and you can forget about the consequences as you don't see the harm when you are having a smoke like your dad did.
Class A drugs tend to have an immediate effect, whether perceived good or bad. You can draw a quick conclusion.

Personally, if you could turn back time, I'd educate a lot more on the harm alcohol does. You can't just outlaw it once people are used to having it. Millions of people enjoy alcohol without any problem. In fact half the babies in the world and in fact young relationships wouldn't have happened without it.
However having some dutch courage to talk to a girl in a pub is a far cry from yobs fighting in the street or people being beaten or raped. If you count the number of deaths from alcohol poisoning I'm thinking it isn't as big as drugs. If you count all the harm including deaths related to alcohol, it would be beyond massive.
Unfortunately I can't turn back time and the genie is out of the bottle.
So it has to be a hard line. If you are drunk and do something wrong it's your fault and you suffer the consequences. I'd increase sentences for drunk driving and would also come down hard on the Saturday night drinking culture in town centres too.


The lesson from a drugs point of view is to not let it get to be acceptable like alcohol is.
I know friends who admit to trying drugs in the past and know of people who take coke now (they are not friends).
The ones who do it think it's cool like smoking used to be. If you don't change that perception it will end up as wide spread as smoking was/is.
Making it legal will do exactly the opposite. So that is not a solution in my opinion.
Reclassifying certain drugs is possibly a way forward but it needs to be carefully thought out.

Helping those that are addicted to any of those substances is a good thing. I know it's tax payer money but if they want to change then I'd pay the money to help them. If they don't want to change and follow crime to feed the habit or push the habit then jail it is.

.............I do like it when a sensible debate breaks out on this forum.

Have to say I agree with the posts above - surely logic says there are more alcohol related deaths/injuries/consequences becuase it's available on literally every single street corner up and down the land and however 'rife' drugs and the drug scene are/is the truth is most people wouldn't know how to get hold of it directly.

Fair enough we've all got a mate who can sort it out so we're only every probably 1 person away from supply but it's still nowhere near as readily available as alcohol.

In all honesty, how many here could get say coke 'straight from a dealer' rather than via a mate who knows one? Adimitedly they both amount to the same result but you know what I mean I hope.

Stick on sale in the Co-op, Shell Garage, mobile van that comes to work of a dinner time and a stall selling it outside the Con Club on matchdays and you watch the negative consequences snowball.

The exact same thing can be said of recreational drugs; the issue of course is that those people are forced to become criminals to obtain them, and there are no safety or purity standards in place during manufacture, to protect them from harm. Not to mention the big lie that sits at the heart of drug education - "Drugs are bad, m'kay.." If you're 17 and dropping your first E, that is quite clearly not the case - but squeamish drug education hasn't equipped you with honest information about what you can expect, or how to take care of yourself during and after.

Most drug professionals say that most drug deaths don't come from the drugs but what's cut it in with the drugs, to make it into a greater amount. During Prohibition in the USA, alcohol related poisoning went up and it was controlled by a crime.