“Re: Lessig Reading: Shaping Our Lives”

In response to Sims’ post I would like to offer up alcohol as another example of what Lessig is talking about with smoking. The law requires you to be twenty-one in order to drink and there are certain qualifications needed for a bar or a liquor store to sell alcohol. It is also socially unacceptable to be plastered in a social setting, most of the time. I would like to try and figure out why alcohol is more socially welcome than smoking. One could make the argument that cigarettes are much more addicting than alcohol and that cigarettes destroy your body, but what about alcoholism and liver diseases. I am not bashing drinking, I am just presenting the surgeon general’s point of view. Also, outside of the United States it is not uncommon for children to have a drink with their parents at meals. In fact it seems like the United States is the strictest on alcohol out of most countries. Perhaps it is because there are much more antismoking campaigns and cigarette addiction is a much more glaring problem than alcoholism. Maybe it is like the breast cancer piece where domestic abuse is a much harder problem to solve than breast cancer.