Worse, we'll chop your dick off if you feel it interferes with your "identity"
You sum it up right there. It's all one giant head game run on the kids in the goobermint skeulz.
We can't seem to rationalize smoking and alcohol - never MIND that people have smoked for ten centuries, and it contributed more to societies than it took. Yeah, we know more. Well, allow PARENTS to exercise their prerogative - and if a stupid parent wants to let his kid smoke, it's not our concern.
Shouldn't be. Because it shouldn't be part of "public health" to pay for anyone's cancer surgery. That's for individuals, insurance plans, and private charities.
Alcohol. Yeah, there's a lot of Joo hate around here - right now, much of it is deserved. But, do you know, the rates of abusive drinking is very low in Joo families and communities? Yeah...for all they're into, they don't get sloppy drunk themselves.
Yet they drink. Regularly. INCLUDING THE CHILDREN - wine is a regular table beverage at holiday dinners, and the children also have it.
Kids in that world learn, drinking alcohol is not an "adult" thing but a FAMILY thing. And while drinking alcohol is a social thing, drinking alcohol to excess is shameful. Not unlike the difference between going to the bathroom, and defecating your pants.
Their kids learn it. Surely our kids could, too...and they could be taught that someone who gets plastered, is a fool to be laughed at. And someone who does it and drives, is someone to be publicly humiliated and punished.
As for fighting wars...keep the troops all-volunteer. When volunteer rates fall, when re-enlist rates crash...in marketing, that's known as a "signal." That's telling the Pentagon fruit-salad types, that they're losing the support of the patriots actually standing a post, committing to enlistment; and they'd better re-appraise what they're doing, or communicate it better.