Apparently......

....it's a genetic fact.  One of my friends is a Chinese doctor and she tells me that most of her race cannot drink alcohol and that the same is true for natives and aboriginals because they share the same genetic profile.  Remember, natives arrived here when there was a land bridge connecting Asia with North and South America, so the biology is the same. 

Man, that explains a lot!

We were out for dim-sum and I ordered a wine.  She never drinks and proceeded to explain that her race breaks down ethanol into water and acid more slowly than do Caucasians because they don't have enough ALDH-2 enzyme; apparently, it's all about chromosomes four and 11.  And the same is true for about one third of Jews, which is why you don't see a lot of Jewish drunks sliding about in the public thoroughfare.

Looked into this when another friend I was having coffee with talked about an AA meeting she had recently attended and complained about all the natives that were bussed from a nearby treatment centre.  "One guy stood up and talked about how he was in his fifth treatment program!  I'm sick of it," she added.  "And we're paying for it!"  Yep, we are.  But the treatment centres probably aren't going to let slip this little nugget about why natives simply can't drink because hey, they wouldn't get the money the rest of us hand over to uselessly treat them!

There are genetic racial differences.  Just ask any Caucasian runner trying to catch a Kenyan or a Jamaican. 
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While I am talking about natives, I'd like to say a few words about the just-released Truth and Reconciliation Report by native Justice Murray Sinclair.  Many of it's 94 recommendations are ridiculous, but our fearless new leader plans to implement all of them.  Please, give your head a shake!  It's all about the residential school system that saw native children taken from the reserve and sent to live and learn elsewhere. 

How is this different from any other boarding school?  The British upper-crust have not trusted their own to raise offspring for generations.  Every upper-class British child was sent to a boarding school at the age of seven to be molded in the "British" form.  And yes, they were -- and are -- regularly caned, bullied, shunned and strapped.  Who leads Britain?  Products of this system, that's who.  And by the way, Canadian private and public schools meted out corporal punishment with reliable results.  It was "normal".  One of my finer moments was being told to stand outside the classroom by my geography teacher, Mr. Qadri.  Me!  I was in grade 12, head cheerleader, girlfriend of the head boy and I was mortified!  The vice-principal happened along and asked me what I was doing there.  "Being punished, sir," I replied.  Didn't like it, but it took me beneficially down a peg or two. 

The many reserves I drive through in this area are places of squalor and desperation, where fentanyl, alcoholism and child abuse run riot.  The best thing to do is get off them.  Native North Americans did not have a written language, so it was concluded that children from these places needed to be educated.  Is that so bad?  Where it all breaks down is when natives stay on, or return to, the reserve.  There is absolutely no future in those hell holes and Justice Sinclair should be helping people move on, not encouraging them to dwell in, and dine out on, his personal despair, hopelessness and misery of the past.