"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
There has been a spate of articles on alcohol in the news lately. There was this one a few days ago about drinking in pregnancy and then this one about college drinking. The good news is that pregnant women are drinking less. The bad news is that large numbers of college students are dying and sexually assaulting each other while under the influence of alcohol. But wait, when you read the article, it’s not actually college students, it’s people of college age and the numbers of casualties at the hands of alcohol are “estimates” taken from traffic accidents, coroner reports, and CDC figures. I thought the 1400 deaths and 70,000 sexual assaults sounded awfully high. If that many deaths and assaults were occurring each year on college campuses, there would be a huge outcry about it. The numbers are probably overestimates given the diversity of sources from which they were culled, and they aren't just college students, but inner city youths, young employed adults, and the rural poor as well. (How many traffic accident reports say if a person is a college student? None, I'd wager) The fact is, you’re probably still safer from drunks on a college campus than you are at the average professional sporting event. Of course, presenting the problem as if it is peculiar to college students makes it sound more threatening and grabs the attention of the middle class better.
