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Modern people drunk a lot, event recently. In France, 80 years ago, kids would drink wine at school. Drink and driving prevention and repression certainly play
by BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Modern people drunk a lot, event recently. In France, 80 years ago, kids would drink wine at school.
Drink and driving prevention and repression certainly played a big part in it.
But I think other factors came at play:
- Science. We know now better about the effect of alcohol. This drove the public opinion into a certain direction. Having the general acceptance this was a bad idea created policies to prevent things like having wine in schools in 1956: https://expat-in-france.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/wine-drinking-ban-french-school.jpg https://expat-in-france.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/wine-...
- Hygiene. If you can drink water safely from the tap, it helps.
- Moving to a service based society. If you don't have to work in a mine, you drink less.
- Other drugs came around. The ones you identify as such. And the one that are more innocent, like sugar, tv shows and social medias.
- slau 3y agoDepends on your definition of "children". France only banned alcohol in lycées in 1981... only 42 years ago. Otherwise, you are right. The main ban (children under the age of 14) was in 1956, or 67 years ago.
- KeplerBoy 3y agoIs Alcohol banned in the french equivalent of a high school? It certainly is not here in Austria. 17 year olds drinking beer between their late afternoon classes is not unheard of and often tolerated.
- slau 3y agoLycée would be the equivalent of high-school, with a typical age of 15-18 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_education_in_France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_education_in_France).
- miroljub 3y agoWhy would it not be tolerated? They are almost grown up. If they are considered mature enough to make their driver's license, why wouldn't they be allowed to drink?
- digging 3y agoThey're also old enough to have sex, but they probably aren't supposed to do that at school.
- KeplerBoy 3y ago> If they are considered mature enough to make their driver's license, why wouldn't they be allowed to drink? Don't know, seems natural to me, since I've grown up with that mindset but not all nations agree on that.
- cobbaut 3y agoThat main ban is for purchasing alcoholic beverages. Adults in France can buy alcohol and serve it legally to their children. Same in Belgium, until 2010 it was even allowed to serve drinks to children in bars providing that adults where present and buying the drinks. I don't get some countries or people that forbid alcohol until you are 18 or 21. I drank beer when I was 8 and got totally drunk at 14. Which was a good thing, because it was at home and, well, lesson learned. Starting with alcohol when going out at 18 or 21 sounds much more dangerous.
- MAGZine 3y agoMany states and provinces in north America have similar provisions, just fyi.
- bonzini 3y agoThe important thing is getting even mildly drunk, even once only, before you are confident driving. 5 years as in the US are way too much as you will confidently drive drunk without understanding the effect. In other countries you will probably be drunk for the first time around the time you're taking driving lessons, or earlier.
- zeku 3y agoIn North America drunk driving is a huge problem. You can't get anywhere without driving a car so if you're drinking and not in your house you have to drive home. Social pressure/not yet fully formed brain etc. leads to ppl under 21 being more likely to drive drunk. That's the rationale for not being able to drink until 21. "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that minimum drinking age laws have saved more than 31,000 lives from 1975 to 2017" https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safety-issues/alcohol-impaired-driving/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safe...
- kjkjadksj 3y agoWow I would have thought this saved more than a thousand lives a year, thats like a rounding error with the amount of deaths overall a year. Then take into account probably a lot more underage kids get their lives ruined with a drinking conviction and its probably a law that results in overall net harm.
- s_dev 3y agoBelgium wants to give kids beer to keep them off sugary drinks: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12248/belgian-plan-give-beer-schoolchildren https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12248/belgian-plan-give-... They tested it out and the test was successful. The kids preferred beer to sugary drinks. The beer was much weaker than what adults are accustomed to at 1.5% to 2% alcohol.
- zeku 3y agoJust some correction here for ppl who skim stuff: The linked article says this was a trial in 2001. Only 1 school did it and it seemed to go well, but no other schools were willing to try it.
- HappMacDonald 3y agoDepends on your definition of "innocent". Sugar is Satan-incarnate (and I am its slave )
- darkclouds 3y agoI love my mucopolysaccharides, it keeps the COPD away.
- Aerbil313 3y agoSorry for off-topic, but I must say this. Sugar is the worst substance for public health ever. It's literally poison. Modern society is mostly cured of diseases of the old, but it's littered with the chronic diseases (which medical science pretends to solve by sympomatic treatment) whose only cause is sugar. I abandoned sugar cold-turkey after watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM, and am thankful to God that I was only 18 when I watched it. And no, FDA says it won't do anything about sugar, see the video.
- namdnay 3y agoI wouldn't go that far.. introducing sugar in as many foods (and worse, drinks) as possible is a big problem. but sugar in of itself is a very useful quick energy boost. it's not like we waited for the 20th century to start liking fruits it would be extremely difficult to run a marathon without sugar in some form
- chrisco255 3y agoFruits used to be a seasonal treat, and people lived very active exhausting lifestyles. As we've gotten more sedentary, sugar consumption has gone up, and it should truly be the opposite. Also no, it's no more difficult to run a marathon with an all meat, zero carb diet than it is with a carb heavy diet. People run ultramarathons on carnivore diets: https://youtu.be/PEgjafWFMQ4 https://youtu.be/PEgjafWFMQ4 And this is how ancient humans hunted game as well, despite not having access to trail mix and Power Bars, as you can see in the Masaai persistence hunting technique: https://youtu.be/9iGJjdt1xSo https://youtu.be/9iGJjdt1xSo
- lynx23 3y agoI am not sure if science as we understand it had so much to do with it. To my experience, society changed enough to no longer tolerate--or at least accept as normal- drunken family members. There was a point where the always-drunken-grandfather was suddenly considered ill and no longer just a little weird. A noticed this in my own family when I was still young. There was a point where constant-drunkenness was suddenly frowned upon with a certain vigor. And the younger generation sort of got the message: "I dont want to be like grandpa, he is actually a poor devil..."
- throwawaylinux 3y agoTo be clear, this wasn't just suddenly frowned upon. "Drunks" have been looked down on and/or overindulgence considered bad or sinful since -- I don't know -- the Greeks and Romans, certainly Christianity.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mike_hock 3y ago+ - Society is now expected to be your babysitter. If your actions have negative consequences, they should have been forbidden and prevented.
- msla 3y agoWe're doing a lot less of "society as babysitter" now. The ability of people to be open about being gay, trans, non-religious, Jewish, mixed-race, and left-handed are all examples of society no longer caring about things it once pried into deeply.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoAt what time in the past was this less true than now?
- otikik 3y agoAs long as it only affects you, I think you should do whatever you want. But you are conflating "society" with "individual" here. If a lot of people smoke, then a lot of them develop respiratory (and other) problems. So a lot more people need treatment, which could have gone to other patients. At that point it is no longer an individial situation which affects only you, it's a societal problem. Societies which don't address their problems eventually fade out. It's not babysitting, it's self-defense.
- koolba 3y ago> If a lot of people smoke, then a lot of them develop respiratory (and other) problems. So a lot more people need treatment, which could have gone to other patients. At that point it is no longer an individial situation which affects only you, it's a societal problem. Societies which don't address their problems eventually fade out. By that same logic we should be locking down juice boxes, donuts, and bacon to prevent heart disease and diabetes. At some point it’s definitely babysitting and we’re well beyond it.
- spion 3y agoMaybe we should. Its costing us over a trillion now and costs have gone up 10 times in the past 50 years.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoCost as well; water is dirt cheap (for now anyway, there's potable water shortages in plenty of places and that will become a worldwide issue soon enough), anything alcoholic has become more and more expensive for various reasons, including but not limited to taxes + extra "discouragement" taxes, at least where I live. Drinking is an expensive hobby, to the point where weed is cheaper and has less side effects if the purpose is to alter your state of mind a bit.
- jeltz 3y agoLack of potable water will never become a worldwide issue. The lack of water which could become a worldwide issue is water for agriculture which causes starvation in poor countries which in turn causes refugee crises and wars. Lack of potable water will remain a very local issue even under very dire scenarios for global warming.
- matkoniecz 3y agoAnd lack of water would make alcohol even more expensive.
- jeltz 3y agoVery true. Making alcohol requires a lot of water.
- TrueSlacker0 3y agoA very efficient brewery will use 3 gallons water per 1 gallon of beer produced. An average one uses 6.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> If you can drink water safely from the tap, it helps. It's worth remembering that alcohol sterilizes many otherwise dangerous things. Being drunk all the time can easily be better than being sick all the time.
- saiya-jin 3y agoIt needs to be pretty strong to sterilize, way above strong red wine. Also the stronger it is the more it dehydrates you. So if you need to compensate sterile alcohol being drunk with unsafe water in some form, you still lose overall. So no you can't satisfy your long term hydration needs by drinking anything strong enough to be safe by its alcohol content alone.
- DanielHB 3y agoI cholera was the main problem and I think even a low % of alcohol would kill the bacteria
- lucideer 3y agoIt wasn't just about the alcohol content, in the case of beer for example it was also about the brewing process involving sterilisation before that was widely being done to water, as well as the antiseptic properties of hops.
- usrusr 3y agoLook at it not from the angle of killing everything, but from the angle of how fast will trace amounts of life multiply in that environment. Absence of trace amounts wasn't really a thing before canning, which was at the stage of promising military prototypes during the Napoleonic Wars.
- _zoltan_ 3y agoon our travel in SEA we always did bring with us some Hungarian palinka (50%+) and drank some after every meal. We have managed to avoid stomach issues.
- offices 3y ago
- brnt 3y agoCurrently, alcohol consumption is quite unevenly spread: an 80/20 rule applies I think (and in my country, it's the higher educated who drink most). I wonder if this was true in the past, where beer might have been the only way to drink uncontaminated liquids.
- danielbln 3y agoBeer being a way of drinking uncontaminated water is a myth that somehow sticks around, similar to the belief that people in the middle ages thought the world is flat. Fresh water outsiderof cities was abundant, and inside cities there was usually a system of wells, often running water wells at that.
- bregma 3y agoAH yes, John Snow and the Broad Street pump. A well-known source of drinking water inside a city.
- manfre 3y agoPeople in the today ages believe the world is flat. Given population difference and the Internet giving ignorant people wider reach, it's possible there are more flat Earth believers today than there were in the middle ages.
- toshk 3y agoA big shift was also coffee. Works much better for focus work, and also gives a slight high (big in the beginning). The coffee & alcohol cycle is also an interesting one in the West High paced work environment & coffee jacking up your nervous system, and then in the evening using alcohol to calm it down (or other calmers like weed or painkillers).
- fredgrott 3y agoI have been maca and L-theanine jacking with the effect the focus lasts longer than with caffeine. My bias is that I have ADHD and now use a MAO inhibitor nootropics approach combined with Maca
- obiefernandez 3y agoMaca gets me so wired that I feel high. Even tiny amounts
- FartyMcFarter 3y ago> coffee jacking up your nervous system, and then in the evening using alcohol to calm it down (or other calmers like weed or painkillers). I've heard that green tea can calm down the effects of caffeine (despite containing a bit of caffeine itself). Something to try if you don't want to give up coffee like me.
- _8j50 3y agoTry oolong.
- FartyMcFarter 3y agoMaking a cup as we speak :)
- _8j50 3y agoCheers!
- codethief 3y agoAt least in Spain they still serve wine & beer in university dining halls (included in the meals).
- toshk 3y agoYeah I've seen that in Spain as well, they have small cold beers at lunch and then get back to their day. Here in north if we drink during lunch, we keep going.
- ptsneves 3y agoSame in Portugal.
- Macha 3y agoThe larger ones here have bars on campus. University students are adults though, so that's not that surprising? (Well, Americans are a bit of an outlier with their 21 drinking age)
- elboru 3y agoEven in KFC, that was a nice finding for me, after a long walk through Toledo a few years ago.
- cykros 3y ago"If you don't have to work in a mine, you drink less." Uh...if you have to work with the public, or incompetent people, you may be driven to drink more. The people who work in infosec seem to be the drunkest I know. They do mostly leave it for after work though, because it has gotten quite easy to do sobriety tests on people that are more than subjective.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago> The people who work in infosec seem to be the drunkest I know. Less so in tech-heavy Utah, I imagine.
- taneq 3y ago> If you don't have to work in a mine, you drink less. If you don't have to work in an 1800s-England-style coal mine, sure. Modern mining is a high risk occupation with stringent controls on intoxicants.
- BizarroLand 3y agoAnd that is because we as a society have placed such a high value on the cost of a human life.
- anthk 3y agoIn Spain kids drank "quine" 70 years ago. https://elpais.com/gastronomia/el-comidista/2015/11/11/articulo/1447239566_060305.html https://elpais.com/gastronomia/el-comidista/2015/11/11/artic... In Spanish, but if you are a French speaker you might get some hints. Ad from 1961: https://verne.elpais.com/verne/2014/10/13/articulo/1413177430_000145.html https://verne.elpais.com/verne/2014/10/13/articulo/141317743...
- narag 3y ago70? Nope, it still happened in the seventies, been there, done that. My parents didn't like it, but my aunt had a bottle and sometimes gave me a shot. It was a very light drink, though, no high. What people here would find unbelievable is how much we drank as teenagers. I remember drinking mixes (double shot of hard liquors, like gin, with soda) as soon as 14 and they would serve us openly in bars. Different times.
- giantg2 3y ago"Moving to a service based society. If you don't have to work in a mine, you drink less." Unless you are a software dev...
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoI'm a software dev and I don't drink at all. I'm one of those persons that think this is a luxury job.
- meowface 3y agoIt's certainly not rare, but is drinking particularly prevalent in the software development industry relative to other industries?
- giantg2 3y agoIt feels like it is. We even have jokes like the ballmer peak
- 1323portloo 3y agoI wouldn't say sugar is innocent. It still has the same damaging metabolic effects as alcohol, but without the inebriation.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoNote that wine has become stronger, though. In France table wine used to be as little as 6% and drunk in smaller glasses than today as well.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> - Science. We know now better about the effect of alcohol. This drove the public opinion into a certain direction. Having the general acceptance this was a bad idea created policies to prevent things like having wine in schools in 1956: https://expat-in-france.com https://expat-in-france.com Not buying it. Common sense has always been enough to see the downsides of alcohol. If people dont care about losing motor functioning and having a painful hangover right now they wont care about a chance they will have liver problems in 40 years.
- DontchaKnowit 3y agoI think a bigger thing is the transition from labor oriented work to intellectual work. Not hard to roof a house drunk. But its pretty hard to make spreadsheets drunk.