I can't enjoy The Beatles anymore. | Page 3 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Annadog40 said

(I am below 21, so this should be a given) never drank alcohol. 

If you are in America most places have their drinking limit lower like Canada is 19 while Mexico and Ireland are 18. 

Aaand in Macedonia the limit’s 18 as well, but you can be 2 years old and every single place that sells alcohol will allow you to buy whatever drink you want, provided that you can make it there and say the word right. People don’t respect most of the laws here and there is no one to stop them from breaking them.

Although a lot of teenagers over here drink, the underage drinking rate is not even nearly as high as it is in the Western European countries as well as the USA, Canada etc. I remember being 5 years old and having my parents send me to buy wine for the guests, or having my grandfather ask me to get him a beer from the market across the street. My parents run a ‘small’ market, and there are dozens of kids buying alcohol and cigarettes daily. People are used to that sort of thing here, so drinking and smoking doesn’t make them as ‘cool’ here as it would in the more developed countries around the world. That’s what I meant in my previous post, that it’s the fact that drinking, smoking and taking drugs are forbidden, that people are more drawn to doing them, especially underage kids. 

When I spent my previous summer in Germany, I finally realized what drugs and alcohol meant to the world. I saw kids running away from their drinking spots – leaving the alcohol behind too! – when they spotted police near by. And then I saw the same kids buying some more alcohol illegally. The fact that a thing like that has never happened in Macedonia left me bewildered. What I was most concerned about was, that the vodka the kids bought was four times the price it would have cost them to buy it in Macedonia, and they still left it behind and bought some more! I drank with some people I hung around with for weeks, and what shocked me was that the Russians among the group had to take a sip of Coca-Cola after drinking the tiniest bit of vodka. And we all know how famed vodka-drinkers are Russians are! In Macedonia, that never happens. Everyone drinks as much as they feel like (of course, there are always the obvious exceptions, but I’m talking about the ‘normal’ type of people I hang out with). The Russians were as equally shocked to find me swallow down a shot after shot of tequila without even stopping to take a lemon in my mouth – I didn’t even know people really did that, aside from films!

So yes, the fact that alcohol is forbidden around the world for people under the ages of 18, 21 or whatever – that’s what mostly responsible for underage drinking! The same goes for drugs. Had they been accepted as normal to consume and legal to buy, there would be a lot less people using any! The more one is set on anti-drug, anti-alcohol demands, the more their usage is encouraged. 

As Linde and Ron Nasty and others above me said, marijuana is as harmful as many things we consume on daily basis. And it is certainly less harmful than alcohol, which is legal. But how many people would consume heroin had it been legal to buy, all the while knowing the harmful effects it has? I’m sure the number of people who’d consume it then would be much lower than what we’ve got nowadays.

The Beatles, in fact, consumed *harmless* (a very exaggerated from many points of view, I know) drugs, aside from John’s heroin usage. Some people like eating and therefore get fat, other like smoking weed in order to get high. It is a choice a person has to make for themselves. 
I understand that if drugs were to be legalized and accepted it would be a mess, and that the wrong people would have easy access to them, but isn’t that the case anyway nowadays?

As long as one doesn’t cause any harm to society or themselves under the influence or anything, it is okay to consume it in my eyes. The Beatles surely as hell don’t cause you any harm while listening to their music, nor to they submit you to drug use. Find your own meaning to their songs.

I once went to Amsterdam and didn’t smoke weed either. And, having read what I’ve written, I realize I might come off as a heavy drug/alcohol user. In fact, I haven’t had a drink in months, and almost never done any drugs.