> Alcohol is not a drug that makes people violent. It merely lowers inhibitions.
Even if lowering inhibitions was the only mechanism by which alcohol induced violence (it's not, despite the popularity of the myth that disinhibition is the only mechanism by which alcohol affects behavior; for instance, various forms of alcohol- or alcohol-withdrawal induced psychoses exist that have nothing to do with disinhibition), alcohol would still be a drug that induced violence.
> If drunkards are violent, the violence can't reasonably blamed on the alcohol per se.
On the one hand, nothing can be blamed on alcohol because alcohol isn't a moral agent. On the other hand, there's nothing special about disinhibition as a mechanism of inducing behavioral change that makes the disinhibitor any less the cause of the resulting behavioral change than it would be if it induced the change by some other mechanism.
They used to claim that alcohol caused pedophilia. It doesn't. Pedophiles drink to intentionally lower their inhibitions when planning to abuse.
You can claim there's no distinction, but there is. Drinking doesn't cause people to suddenly and uncharacteristically lust after children. Lowering your inhibitions to facilitate some impetus already inside you is different in important ways from instilling something in you that wasn't previously there.
> They used to claim that alcohol caused pedophilia.
I'm not sure who "they" are, but this is changing the subject. Alcohol absolutely does cause violence, including by mechanisms other than disinhibition.
> Pedophiles drink to intentionally lower their inhibitions when planning to abuse.
People who are able to form a plan to abuse don't need to lower inhibitions; if its done with a conscious plan, then having something to point to (even to onesself) to evade responsibility is more likely than lowering inhibitions as the motive. There are also absolutely cases of people who abuse under the influence of alcohol without a conscious plan prior to becoming intoxicated (which may still be a matter of disinhibition, but very different in character--if not ultimate moral culpability--from when alcohol is part of a plan of abuse, and in any case this is all besides the point on the question of violence generally, which alcohol, through various induced psychoses, among other means, absolutely does cause by means other than disinhibition.)
> Drinking doesn't cause people to suddenly and uncharacterustifally lust after children.
I don't really care if people have un-acted-upon socially-unacceptable impulses (pretty much everyone does, even if it isn't pedophilia, which I have no idea why you have decided to shift the conversation to from violence.) Alcohol absolutely does induce people to act on such impulses when they otherwise would not choose to, even when they become intoxicated without any intent to act on any such impulse--that's disinhibition--and absolutely does also lead to dangerous socially-unacceptable action not related to disinhibition, as well.
> Lowering your inhibitions to facilitate some impetus already inside you is different in important ways from instilling something in you that wasn't previously there.
There are certainly contexts in which the difference is important, but its absolutely not important when discussing the social costs associated with the drug in question and, in any case, the mechanisms by which alcohol leads to violence are not limited to disinhibition in any case, no matter how popular that myth is. Psychosis induced by alcohol intoxication is real. Psychosis associated with alcohol withdrawal is also real. Both can produce violence, and neither has anything to do with disinhibition.
I wasn't trying to shift the conversation anywhere. I just felt it would be an easier to parse example. People typically comprehend the idea that sexual orientation doesn't suddenly and magically change because you had a beer. General understanding of anger management tends to lack a clear and bright line of that sort.
Even if lowering inhibitions was the only mechanism by which alcohol induced violence (it's not, despite the popularity of the myth that disinhibition is the only mechanism by which alcohol affects behavior; for instance, various forms of alcohol- or alcohol-withdrawal induced psychoses exist that have nothing to do with disinhibition), alcohol would still be a drug that induced violence.
> If drunkards are violent, the violence can't reasonably blamed on the alcohol per se.
On the one hand, nothing can be blamed on alcohol because alcohol isn't a moral agent. On the other hand, there's nothing special about disinhibition as a mechanism of inducing behavioral change that makes the disinhibitor any less the cause of the resulting behavioral change than it would be if it induced the change by some other mechanism.