Wednesday, November 26, 2003

"The War on Drinks."

This paper's a little vague, since I can't find Anna Quindlen's The War on Drinks, but I need to post it somewhere...so...bear with it. It's basically just demoting trying to stop people from drinking alcohol.

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It is time to declare "war" on drinking? And is it really. Is it true, that all's fair in love and war. Is it true? Has a war ever solved much? Was anything solved after World War I? Not anything, other than perhaps the set-up for World War II.

Anna Quindlen's The War on Drinks chronicles a yell to the world, claiming that something needs to be done with alcohol. Stating that lives need to be saved, that something as horrid as alcohol must be stopped. She asks for warning labels. Then she shifts at the end of her piece, saying, "But it's time for a change, not just in ads, but in the atmosphere that assumes a substance is innocuous because it's not illegal." And to what point? To what ends, to what amends, to what compromise, to what demise, to what lulling? What will a final realization that alcohol isn't insipid just because it isn't illegal do? Nothing. To anyone that's drinking alcohol, to whatever reason, it should be quite obvious to them that drinking alcohol in large amounts, to the point where it's alcoholism, is a bad thing. Hopefully people aren't that oblivious that they don't realize that simple, nearly intuitional nudge. The only way to stop alcohol is to nullify it. To kill it from its heart and head. To make it annihilated and nothing. But even then it will be alive. Alcohol is much like a zombie, or a phoenix: it will rise from its ashes and death no matter what. The only way to kill alcohol is for it to never have existed at all.

It's been seen what banning of alcohol does. With the prohibition amendment in the 1920's, millions of Americans turned to swindling and brewing their own alcohol. Due to alcohol's banning, it became even more interesting to try it. It was a forbidden fruit. They could resist nearly everything but temptation. And it's not like Americans hadn't been drinking alcohol before prohibition. But no, the government decided, "Well, we'll ban alcohol, that'll stop this indecency in our culture today." Funny how irony works.

Around ten years later, the amendment was cancelled out by another, ending the prohibition. What did this war do? What did it mean? What did it change? That's right, it changed nothing; it didn't change one thing at all—other than make alcohol more widely known. It simply heightened America's endearment with this drug.

Anna Quindlen states the fact that commercials make drinking look cool. Isn't that what any ad should do for its endorsed product? As it stands, alcohol commercials are most often shown late at night, or during football games. There's isn't an extreme overbearance of alcohol ads just swimming around all over TV. It's actually limited to certain age groups. Or at least it is shown to be like that. Saying that it's bad that alcohol commercials make drinking look cool and it's a bad thing is like saying that commercials about some stupid shampoo that makes the shampoo look wild, sexual, and cool is a bad thing as well. It's pretty much a given that advertisers are going to try and make their ads appeal to what age group they want in ways that are cute and sensual.

What age group do most alcohol commercials appeal to? College students. People that are at least twenty-one and have the right, legally, to drink. What they do is their problem. It's not going to be stopped by some less "cool" advertising. College and drinking itself is tied together in some weird, twisted oxymoron of moronic proportions as it is. It does sound rather strange that a time where you're learning is also a time to party until it's dead dawn, but that's just the way it is.

It's just ingrained. Alcohol is ingrained in American culture as well as many other cultures around the world. It's a symbol of twisted maturity; a symbol of age and responsible power. It's only inevitable that people abuse it for what it does. It's like what people that are obese are likely to do: they are likely to eat large amounts of food when they are depressed. In stimuli, an alcoholic drinks alcohol to drown his or her emotions and depression in a blurred haze that is alcohol's depressant effects. This leads to different reactions in different people.

Some people are inherently calm. Others are angry and beat on others in their rage. While still others have different reactions. It all depends on what their mood is when said drink is drank. It's a horrible thing. It's a disease, has been labeled as such. But the only way to kill it would be for alcohol to be explicitly banned, or perhaps never to have existed at all. And still explicitly banning it would not completely kill it.

People die from alcohol each year. There's drunk driver accidents; there's death by damage to the liver; there's alcohol poisoning, and so on. It would be great to see these lives saved; sadly, it will never be realized. No matter what the case—whether alcohol's ads are lessened with a noose, or whether alcohol itself is banned—it won't matter. People will still consume it no matter the case. They will still beat their kids, and perhaps their kids will become alcoholics, or perhaps someone that's never even seen or had alcohol will become one. It's an endless circle that's just there, and shall not be stopped, only loosened and infirmed. Alcohol is too ingrained in our culture and society to just die from all efforts trying to snuff it. It's too big of a monster that won't die. It is almost in par with cigarettes to an extent. Cigarettes hurt both the smoker and the second hand smoker, not to mention cause endless pointless deaths a year, while grossing billions of dollars a year in revenue for killing.

If anyone's selfish enough to smoke a cigarette, knowing they are killing themselves for the pleasure, not to mention directly killing themselves, then that's their narcissism. If someone's selfish enough to drink alcohol to the point where they can't be responsible for their actions and kill themselves or forever scar their children, then that's their imbicilic choice. Fighting a so-called war on alcohol isn't going to do anything. It's too big of an industry, it's too interred in our society as whole, and it isn't going to just plop over and die like nothing.

These days, alcohol is given a good no-no to students. From Phy Ed, to those who take the D.A.R.E. [Drugs Abuse Resistance Education] programs, the message that alcohol is bad is there. That's the best that can be done, really. To tell them when they're young not do to it, and tell them hard. Otheriwise it's inane to try and stop something like alcohol. It won't be stopped, it just can't.

There are endless bad things in this world; alcohol is one of the lesser of these evils that is more banal. Just consider at the very least that people aren't dropping like flies from some super virus, or some highly-addictive drug. Things could be much worse than they are. Just consider that and one sees that alcohol, as bad as it is, and as useless in its implications is, isn't as bad as some other things that the world has borne. And to fight something as impune as alcohol is like having sex for virginity; it's hitting something that won't be fazed by punches, and will only come to the point where it's not worth it, and isn't going to alter anything other than make people want to know what the big fuss over alcohol is. It's doing something not out of reason and logic, but simply out of desperation for how something is. It's futile to demote something. In essence, it will only cause more people to want to try alcohol; since when something's seen as so caustic and bad, people seem to do it simply to see why it's so bad. Simply to spit in the goody-goody words spoken against it. It'll only draw more people to the table, further continuing the black hole that is alcohol, and increasing its bleakness and faith. It is a losing battle that, frankly, isn't worth dying for nor endlessly trying to be rid of.

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