Syrian authorities ban alcohol in Damascus

Fair, but it is restricted compares to most European countries. Somehow I forgot bars exist 😅

I used to hold this view too but modern drugs like fent are so dangerous.

By that logic, weapons and literally anything sold illegally should be legalized

Except Muslim countries seem to consistently have lower rates of alcohol consumption due to both cultural norms along with legal prohibition.  If anything Muslim countries are doing right, in terms of overall health of their populace, it’s the reduced levels of alcohol consumption.  You want to criticize Muslim countries, critique cigarette smoking, hookah lounges, and the sale of other drugs outside alcohol, at least compared to the West. 

It does work when the punishment is actually strong enough.

Let the people of Syria decide what they want and don’t impose your failed secularist liberal ideology on us.

Agreed. Those conservatives are uneducated hypocrites.

The fact you equate Isis and Al Qaeda already tells us enough. Why do you feel the need to post if you are this uninformed about the topic?

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this may come as a shock to you, but many of us think the War on Drugs is stupid as well

Yeah, there’s no point in banning those either lol

I agree. The government should legalize them, and only sell in small quantities to people. Government should have a monopoly over drugs and alcohol.

This but unironically

I don’t disagree with the point you’re making, but the fact is that alcohol is still viewed differently from drugs in many societies and is more socially acceptable. Not here to debate whether or not they should be treated the same.

If alcohol were invented today, it would be a schedule 1 controlled substance. Absolutely no medical use, high addiction potential, extreme social damage possible, and withdrawals that can legitimately kill people. Yet cannabis was schedule 1, and has none of those issues. Upside down world we live in.

Neither is it there.

>And we think those bans are stupid and if anyone tried to institute a new ban we would rightfully criticize it. Does your sense of "we" include the people actually living in those communities? If some communities don't want to allow alcohol, because of its many harms, then why does the opinion of people living outside of those communities matter? >We shouldn’t let Middle Eastern repressive regimes off the hook for doing bad things just because we also do bad things. What makes this a "bad thing" for them to do though? Virtually every country restricts harmful substances, despite some people enjoying them - it's just a matter of which ones, and where to draw the line. To be clear, I'm a non-religious Canadian and I do consume alcohol, but I've also traveled to a remote indigenous community that bans it. Who am I to say that they should allow it? If most people in Damascus want alcohol sales to be allowed, then that's an issue. But if most support this restriction, then it's a reasonable policy (especially since it includes an exemption for 3 majority-Christian areas).

Okay? Are "we" the people of syria?

It's not necessarily a bad thing, a government can decide to protect it's people from harms. Literally every country does. Just because they have set the line slightly further for something that literally is bad for you doesn't make them a repressive regime

The most common estimate is set at 1.2k, as tragic as that was, how is that comparable to what Bashar did?

so you're saying you prefer a million deaths to a thousand?

Why does it need to be the CIA secretly when Türkiye was doing it openly?

The US openly gave support to other groups like the Free Syrian Army (really an alliance of many groups) and the SDF.

They could, but the US isn't always behind every single thing.

I think more than anything else the important thing to note is the publics response to it. People across the board are pissed , and still selling booze but not in bottles, instead in tea cups, or whatever workarounds they found. All this says is some shitty rule was passed by the govt. I'm sure we can all find parallels in our own countries in the past few months of similar things.

Hell, these are only the places that are dry 24/7, i na lot of other counties it's becomes illegal to sell past a certain time, like 11pm. So add that to the list. Just to add, let's not forget amish communitys where fking everything is banned.

Dont be daft