Let’s stop with the alcohol shaming, Dean Zimmerman. If your concern is truly to cure the deadliest preventable menace in our society, your efforts are best focused in a different direction. For example, obesity. According to the CDC, obesity is responsible for 2.5 times more preventable deaths per year than alcohol and opioids combined.
Like your comments on alcohol, food is portrayed in the media as a cause of “happiness and sociability.” It “does not require a doctor’s written prescription. It can be obtained and consumed in any quantity desired.”
For many alcohol consumers in this community, alcohol is indeed associated with happiness and sociability, with moderate consumption, it does not lead to the “inevitable hangover” or “temporary happiness” that Zimmerman speaks of.