Alcohol and tobacco are weapons.

Does the fact that the United States of America has a bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (and Explosives) imply that guns are a drug, or that alcohol and tobacco are weapons? I believe that it's the latter: alcohol and tobacco (and narcotics) are weapons. Have you ever read anything about the Opium War? Think about “deliberately induced discontinuity of traditional knowledge transfer.” Think about “sedentarization.”

Alcohol sort of “slows down” the brain; it interferes with normal neural function; anesthetizes the cerebrum. Habitual use makes the brain lazy; drinkers are perceived as less intelligent because people have experienced the effects of alcohol and know that it truly impairs their ability to think formally, carefully and deliberately. It makes people more likely to accept “canned solutions” to problems; or thereby to let other people do their thinking for them. Perhaps that's what it's for. Maybe that's alcohol's purpose.

Tobacco is a neural toxin and a growth inhibitor. It is also an irritant that provokes an immune response that leads to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Especially in a developing youth, it slows the growth and development process, causing the resulting adult to have a skull and brain that is not as full grown and facile as the individuals genetics would otherwise allow. It creates a pseudo-hunger for smoke, and blunts hunger, thereby affecting nutritional intake as well. I was told that studies have shown that smokers with broken bones take twice as long to heal as non-smokers. I was told that the doctors who conducted the studies hypothesized that it may directly interfere with collagen formation. Collagen is a primary structural protein.

Repression of natural sexual function may very well prevent normal hormone release during formative years. The removal of sexual nerve endings in males could potentially lead to lower testosterone and growth factor levels, producing less robust, less large, less intelligent adults. That's what Ronald S. Immerman thinks; he referrs to circumcision as a “low-grade neurological castration.” (Google that and perhaps you'll be likely to find what he really said! Perhaps you'll be moved enough by it that you'll want to go box a straw man.)

It has been conjectured by some that these factors — reduced hormone levels, alcohol, tobacco, (and narcotics) and limited nutrition — produce adults who are not truly full-grown; and that maybe that's partly why blacks and white crackers in the old south were called “boy.” Perhaps they were for real not physically / physiologically full grown men, even as adults. Aldous Huxley hints at this kind of thing in his famous book, “Brave New World.”

Of course, much of the above is hypothesis, hearsay and conjecture. Despite that, don't you think you should err on the side of caution, just in case that's true? Maybe sometimes we really should let others do our thinking for us...