Thank you for posting this. I have also been suspicious of whether we should keep this cultural norm. Pretty much everybody underestimates the harm from alcohol.
The interesting thing is that we’re not the first people to question this. Throughout the entire western world, there was a movement in the early 20th century that saw alcohol clearly: the prohibition movement. It was a global movement, spanning not just the US but also in Canada and the Nordic countries. In the latter it was so successful that the Nordics retain strict controls on alcohol.
But because the government was unable to control the crime syndicates that profited from selling illegal liquor, prohibition was retroactively deemed a failure.
According to Rorabaugh, Prohibition cut alcohol consumption in half with no long term effect. Whereas the 1840s Temperance movement cut consumption by a factor of 4 for the long term. graphtable
Thank you for posting this. I have also been suspicious of whether we should keep this cultural norm. Pretty much everybody underestimates the harm from alcohol.
The interesting thing is that we’re not the first people to question this. Throughout the entire western world, there was a movement in the early 20th century that saw alcohol clearly: the prohibition movement. It was a global movement, spanning not just the US but also in Canada and the Nordic countries. In the latter it was so successful that the Nordics retain strict controls on alcohol.
By many lights, prohibition was successful: alcohol consumption did decrease during the period (Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia [2 … - Jack S. Blocker—Google Books) and rates of liver cirrhosis, alcohol psychosis, and infant mortality declined (Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation—PMC). But because the government was unable to control the crime syndicates that profited from selling illegal liquor, prohibition was retroactively deemed a failure. Now nobody is allowed to question the cultural norm of alcohol, because “we tried that already.”
The crime syndicates were the failure.
According to Rorabaugh, Prohibition cut alcohol consumption in half with no long term effect. Whereas the 1840s Temperance movement cut consumption by a factor of 4 for the long term. graph table