The 25,000-Year-Old Teeth That Just Rewrote The History Of Human Drug Use

It is, apparently, something much more fundamental.

This does not mean the finding supports any particular policy position.

The antiquity of a behavior does not determine its social value or its appropriate regulation.

Alcohol has been used for thousands of years; that antiquity does not settle debates about its regulation or its harms.

The same applies to betel nut, and to the broader question of how societies should relate to psychoactive substances.

But the finding does reframe the terms of the debate.