Global Recession, Alcohol Consumption, and the Moments That Neo-Prohibitionists Crave

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This from today's New York Times.

As I noted here and here, context and historical perspective alter the picture. But it’s worth contemplating the preachy subtext of the editorial piece in the Times: Hard times = propensity to drink to excess. People who enjoy alcohol, and the right to drink, ought to worry about that subtext.

Historically, prohibitionist sentiment flourishes during periods of economic, social, and cultural turmoil. A century ago, for example, Americans were adjusting to the upheaval that accompanied the birth of the industrial economy, and the emergence of technologies like electricity and the telephone.

Prohibitionists had little trouble persuading a troubled, frightened nation that alcohol made life worse, and that eliminating it would make life better.

We’re living through an even more tumultuous era now, as digitization and the internet force us to re-imagine media, education, and the economy, and as globalization and terrorism rattle our psyches. Neo-prohibitionists will seize the moment, and prey on Americans’ insecurities. They're already working to build a dry America one step at a time: A new local tax here, a more strict licensing regulation there; elsewhere programs designed to teach children to demonize, rather than respect, alcohol.

As the recession deepens, and turns to depression, we can expect new “scientific” studies demonstrating the dangers of turning to drink during hard times. Drys will blame alcohol for upswings in, say, crime or domestic violence, whose rates typically rise when societies are in turmoil.

As global demand for food increases, and food prices soar, drys may argue (as did their counterparts a century ago) that valuable crop land ought not be “wasted” on hops or barley; that corn should not be “wasted” on beer.

In short, in hard times, prohibitionists argue for restrictions on drink -- for a more intrusive nanny state -- on grounds that those hard times lead adults to drink. Drinkers: beware.

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Good source of information for all things alcohol: Alcohol Problems and Solutions

Oh, Please.

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This "research" from the World Cancer Research Fund (a British group) (and via the weekly newsletter [subscription only] edited by Pete Reid of Modern Brewery Age).

To which I say: Oh, for fuck's sake. Give it up. How much anyone wanna bet that the World Cancer Research Fund is interested in cancer research in the same way that the Center for Science in the Public Interest is interested in science? (As far as CSPI is concerned, the only "real" science is the stuff that supports its nearly fascist, nanny-state agenda....)

Besides which, this drinking-and-cancer thing has been around for decades and warnings show up, clockwork-like, every decade or so. To say nothing of that fact that humans drink less alcohol now than they have in millennia past, and if cancer were really so lethal and risky, well, the human race would have died out, ya know, millennia ago.

It's a prohibitionist plot, is what it is.....

(Kidding.) (Sort of.)

Comment from Alan of the "Good Beer Blog" (and Apologies for Malfunctioning Comments Function)

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Alan from the Good Beer Blog (and also co-host of the annual Yule Photo contest) wanted to comment on an earlier post -- and discovered that my "comments" function is still wonky, presumably from the Great Blog Crash of '08. So apologies for that.

And I'll just use this entry to post Alan's comment. He's commenting on an earlier blog entry, which you can read here. And Alan's response to it is:

I don't think I was referring to Lew but I clearly do have those reactions to drinking that I was referring to - especially at pubs or beer fest when it is after my point in the evening, a point that seems to get earlier each year. It is all a continuum and, as you say, there is plenty of good in enjoying the simple organic pleasure of a beer or a leg of lamb or a garden's worth of your own work. But there are other points on the scale, too, and at some of them sit less pleasant things, the basic and on down the way to the base.