Civics and HealthAllen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Science
Civics and Health
Allen, William H. (WIlliam Harvey)
Hygiene; Public health
Things do not happen as described in the early text-book. Other things
not mentioned hinder progress and happiness. The child at work resents
the mis-education received at school and suspects that he has been
following false gods. The enemies that cause him trouble come from
unexpected sources. He finds it infinitely easier to eschew alcohol and
tobacco than to avoid living conditions that insidiously undermine his
aversion to stimulants and narcotics. The reasons for avoiding
stimulants in the interest of others are more numerous and more cogent
than the reasons for avoiding stimulants and narcotics for one's own
sake. The altruistic reasons for shunning stimulants and narcotics
cannot be implanted in the child unless he sees the evil of excess _per
se_ in anything and everything, and unless he becomes thoroughly
grounded in the life relations and health relations to which he must
adapt himself.
Unclean streets, unclean milk, congested tenements, can do more harm
than alcohol and tobacco, because they breed a physique that craves
stimulants and drugs. Adenoids and defective vision will injure a
larger proportion of the afflicted than will alcohol and tobacco,
because they earlier and more certainly substitute discouragement for
hope, handicap for equal chance. Failure to enforce health laws is a
more serious menace to health and morals than drunkenness or tobacco
cancer.
If it is true that we must attack the problem of alcohol from the
standpoint of its social and industrial effects, we are forced at once
to consider the machinery by which cities and governments control the
manufacture and sale of alcohol. It is not an exaggeration to say that
courses in regulating the traffic in alcohol are more necessary than
courses in the effects of alcohol upon digestion and respiration.
If Sunday closing of saloons, local option, high license, and
prohibition have failed, there is no evidence that the failure is due
to the principles underlying any one of these methods. Until more
earnest effort is made to study the effects of these methods, the
results of their enforcement and the causes of their nonenforcement, no
one is justified in declaring that either policy is successful or
unsuccessful. It is very easy to select from the meager facts now
available convincing proofs both that prohibition does not prohibit and
that high license leads to increased drunkenness. The consequence is
that the movements to control, restrict, or prohibit the use of alcohol
are emotional, not rational.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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