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California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops

389 points · 987 comments · randycupertino

alexandre_m · 1790644533 · focus · HN ↗
> while young people are drinking less alcohol due to health and financial concerns
My observation is that gen-z spends less time socializing in real life, and drinking remains a social habit for the most part at a younger age. While they drink less, cannabis, vaping and psychedelics are on the rise.
It's a nice claim to say they are more responsible, but it tells an incomplete story.
1. 1-6 · 1790645754 · focus · HN ↗
  I may be old-fashioned but the substitute mind-altering drugs you're mentioning does not sound like a more responsible pathway.
  1. landdate · 1790650740 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    mrob · 1790677309 · focus · HN ↗
    >alcohol's main mechanism is through depleting oxygen in the blood
    Blood oxygen is quickly and cheaply measured with a pulse oximeter, which shows this to be false. The primary mechanism of action of ethanol is increasing the sensitivity of some GABA receptors (similar to benzodiazepines and barbiturates). But ethanol has very complex pharmacology, which a huge number of other targets. See:
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacology_of_ethanol" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacology_of_ethanol
    lh712 · 1790682952 · focus · HN ↗
    Yup. That original post had several factual errors.
    I am not a supporter of alcohol, but I find it kind of funny when some people demonize alcohol (which I agree is bad for one's health and has many negative externalities, but which has been used by our societies for millennia and its effects are relatively well understood, at least phenomenologically from extensive experience) and drop it in favor of much less understood and often much more dangerous drugs.
    landdate · 1790818164 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't use drugs, and if you are implying weed then you are out of your mind. I think weed should stay illegal as should all psychedelics. Don't put me in a box, I just despise alcohol because most other dangerously evil drugs aren't tolerated. Seeing people drink alcohol is like seeing someone on a crack pipe. Its wrong and disgusting and normal people are enranged at this intolerable behavior. Forced rehab for all alchys, druggies, and the like.
    Worst is all the nonsense that infiltrates society because of alcohol. How many people claiming rape or raping or whatever or bar fights or swerving jnto the road killing innocent people. Its a big mess and I am sick of this. No more. If you drink I don't care if you get water boarded, I will walk right past you, no sympathy except for those who seek help.
    lh712 · 1790863018 · focus · HN ↗
    I did not mean to imply anything about you specifically. I understand that it might have sounded that way, and for that I apologize.
    As for other points, I think you take that too emotionally for your own good. (It just clouds the judgement.) And this I am saying as somebody who (1) does not use drugs, and drinks alcohol very rarely, and (2) experienced negative externalities of drugs and alcohol abuse by other people firsthand, to quite an extreme level actually.
    To be honest, in principle, if done correctly, I would not be against banning and eradicating all (non-medicinal and non-scientific) use of drugs including alcohol. But one should keep in mind that these substances also play some beneficial roles in society (and for individuals). Among other things, they serve as a valve that allows people to "release pressure", and numb their dissatisfaction with circumstances of their life. In this way, the increase in the substance abuse is an indicator of wider dysfunction in our societies (although it is by no means directly related to it, since there are other factors). You close that valve completely, and the pressure might get released in way that is even more destructive.

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