Furthermore, it does not address any real, established, modern facts on the issue. Again, there is *zero* harm with moderate drinking. Moderate drinkers
live longer than people who do not drink. The same is true of sugars and fats. Eating excessive sugar increases the risk of obesity which is very harmful; some people are even sugar addicts. On the other hand, we are healthier if we eat sugars in moderation than if we neglect them entirely. It would be strange to think of a state prohibition on candy. Why are such critical facts omitted from the verses you quoted? To me it seems clear: those verses were authored by people hudreds of years ago, and those people did not have the benefit of the enormous knowledge we have accumulated in the past 1,300 years.
Surely the authors cannot be blamed for not knowing what we know today. Nevertheless, no book can be considered to have
perfect, indisputable wisdom about any topic when it has such glaring omissions. There are better sources of wisdom on this issue.
Compare the verses you quoted to the following considerations on alcohol prohibition which can be found at an online encyclopedia:
The most direct effects of prohibitions are on the supply and demand for the prohibited commodity.4 Prohibitions raise supply costs because black market suppliers face legal punishments for manufacturing, distributing, and selling. Conditional on operating in secret, however, black market suppliers face low marginal costs of evading government regulations and taxes (Miron 2001), which provides a partial offset to the increased costs due to prohibition.5 Prohibitions reduce demand by creating legal penalties for possession and by increasing uncertainty about product quality.6 Prohibitions also reduce demand if consumers exhibit "respect for the law." At the same time, prohibitions can increase demand through a "forbidden fruit" effect, meaning a tendency for consumers to desire that which has been forbidden to them. Thus, the effect of prohibitions on price and even quantity are ambiguous a priori and must be determined empirically.
In addition to affecting price and quantity, prohibitions potentially increase violent and non-violent crime. Participants in an illegal trade cannot use the legal and judicial system to resolve disputes, so they seek other methods such as violence. Enforcement of prohibitions means reduced resources for enforcement of non-prohibition laws, which implies reduced deterrence of crime generally. Prohibitions can increase income-generating crime, such as theft or prostitution, by raising prices if consumers finance consumption of the prohibited commodity from such crime. And prohibitions give black market suppliers an incentive to corrupt law enforcement officials and politicians. Despite these tendencies to increase crime, the net effect of prohibitions on crime can be negative if prohibitions discourage consumption of the prohibited good and if such consumption encourages criminal activity. Thus, the net effect of prohibitions on crime can only be determined empirically.
Two other effects of prohibitions are the effects on overdoses and accidental poisonings. Because suppliers in a prohibited market must hide their activities from the authorities, they have a strong incentive to produce and ship the good in the most concentrated and hence most easily concealed form (Thornton 1998). This implies that prohibitions help make the potent forms of a good more readily available or even help create more potent forms of a prohibited substance. By itself this effect does not necessarily change the manner in which consumption takes place; consumers can potentially redilute the commodity in question to achieve their desired degree of potency. But in practice such redilution is imperfect, suggesting increased overdoses under prohibitions.7
). 