"Everything in moderation".

Of course alcohol is bad for you. I've seen the results of what happens to people who treat beer as if it's a fit substitute for water; factory towns used to be full of them, all yelling incoherently at little kids to get off their lawns they don't have/own. As for the hard stuff, they don't call it rotgut for nothin'.

And of course, the "science" has been going back and forth on the matter since FOREVER. Literally. There are warnings against alcohol all throughout history just as much as there are poems praising how healthful wine and beer can be.

The whole Temperance movement wasn't just "women being bitches". It can all be traced back to DOCTORS of the War of 1812, who believed that rationing a quart of hard booze (rum for the Brits/Canadians, and whiskey for the Americans) every day was good for both health and morale (well, morale, maybe). Of course, this resulted in an entire generation of North American men becoming alcoholics. And back then, there were, of course, no age laws (no way to prove your age, anyway), so they passed on their bad habits to their sons.

Tell me, why did Huck Finn take his ride down the river again? Oh, yeah, coz his busybody Karen of an auntie didn't think he should be drinking and smoking at his age ....

So, yeah, the Temperance movement was just as much about drunken kids as anything else. The reaction should have been age laws right out the gate, not total prohibition. Dumbasses going from one extreme straight to the other again.

Spin on a few decades, they're still waffling between "2 drinks a day is OK" to "alcohol is the devil" - and they're using that "the brain isn't "fully formed" until 25" nonsense ... well, guess what, the brain changes all through life.

I'm far more suspicious of those who would take it away outright than those who would preach responsible use.