I created a fairly successful app that aimed to give users the best drink specials in my college town. I honestly can't bring myself to work on it anymore because I feel morally reprehensible and somewhat socially responsible for binge drinking when alcohol is such a dangerous substance. Who's not going to over-drink when well drinks are $0.25 a pop, nobody makes a ton of expendable income in college, and my app prominently puts that special in front of 3000 sets of eyeballs? I just don't feel like I'm adding goodness to the world - I feel like I'm subtracting it.
For what it's worth, Australia's been a pretty good case study on how significantly increased (+70%) taxes - and therefore, prices - for alcohol did not deter binge drinking [1]. All it did was shift the consumption from one form to another, as well as decrease drinking between binges. In that sense, you could arguably say that you're not materially increasing the prevalence of binge drinking but really just saving the money of those who are inevitably going to do it.
Then again, binge drinking here is baked in to the cultural psyche. It may still be seen as more dangerous and therefore less socially acceptable in the States.
Yeah, I've read tons of statistics from both sides of the debate, and still feel a little morally wrong for it. I did add taxi calling directly from the app to 7 different local taxi companies to help assuage some of my perceived guilt. The taxi page does see visits in my analytics though, so that's good if nothing else.
