Predictably, people continued to consume alcohol in less safe ways, illegal "speakeasy" bars flourished, and moonshining became a very popular occupation. NASCAR was born when bootleggers started racing the cars that they had modified to outrun the police.
Eventually, the 21st amendment was passed to repeal the 18th.
Why not slap a significant tax on alcohol advertising just as we do with alcohol sales?
I am all for a complete ban on alcohol ads, even if it seems about as likely to happen as a ban on car ads.
I think your focus is misplaced. It is not policy issue, it is the general public itself that is the problem.
Policymakers tried, via prohibition, would you mark this as a success?
I dont drink, and never have so i am on the outside looking in. It is astonishing how "alcohol" is front and center in many things.
Hard day at work and you want to go out with coworkers.. Where do you almost always end up?
Want to celebrate something? Head over to the bar?
The root issues with alcohol are the same with other drugs, smoking, etc. Peer pressure, societal norms, etc.
Policymakers hands are basically tied.
On one hand they LOVE the revenue. Here (Canada) we have "sin taxes" and alcohol is heavily taxed. No government will want to forfeit this revenue.
Manufacturing alcohol provides jobs, inspecting it provides jobs...
If it is not legal, bootlegging will return.
I would also like to see a decline in Alcohol consumption, much as we saw with smoking.. but you need to take the successful aspects of the "quit smoking" program and apply them to alcohol.
> I would also like to see a decline in Alcohol consumption, much as we saw with smoking..
Exactly and one way to do that is to ban advertising. And that's totally in the power of policy makers I'd say.
Alcoholics love to normalize their behavior and there are a lot of them in the media making subtle decisions that promote their lifestyle.
This!!
I personally don't drink, nor do i advocate those i meet not to drink because that isn't my job. Flip side when i go out with a group, they often advocate that i drink?
I've had a few people tell me i am odd for not drinking, getting drunk is "fun" and i should try it sometime, etc.
If you lived in a teetotaler culture, you would experience exactly the opposite (strange looks/comments for drinking a beer), or possibly worse (since many teetotaler cultures see drinking as a punishable offense).
This "cultural norms at work" drinking has followed me across 5 companies and two countries.
I grew up in a small northern town, so had early first-hand exposure to the devastating effects that rampant alcohol abuse can have on families and communities.
Also possible benefits from making America be a place where fewer want to commit suicides.
They're constrained. There aren't terribly many policy levers to pull! At the extreme, we outright tried banning it in North America once; that didn't work very well. Taxes and minimum pricing do work to reduce consumption, but they're quite unpopular with the public. A political party in my part of the world recently won an election by promising to expand retail availability of alcohol and to lower the price.
I'd note that the majority of the cost of alcohol is already taxes. The untaxed cost of alcohol is kind of frightening and is enough to make me reconsider my more libertarian inclinations with drugs. Pure grain alcohol of the kind used to make cheap spirits or for industrial purposes is literally around $1 a litre to make. Sells for $30 a litre here -- swill vodka has a 3000% markup imposed due to tax policies designed to curb consumption. Cranking it up higher has negative consequences too. I know that with tobacco, among the most dedicated cigarette smokers, increases in prices have little impact on consumption; the addicts we'd want to incentivize the most to quit with price signalling are the most resistant to price signalling due to their addiction -- they just get poorer. It becomes a dichotomy/trade-off. How how hard do we kick the homeless alcoholic when he's down vs. how much we stop college kids from taking up binge-drinking? Booze is also pretty easy to make at home so there's the consideration of prices being high enough to push people to the grey/black market, too.
I would like to see our governments go after alcohol advertising; it's basically a free-for-all in many jurisdictions. It's interesting to compare the new regulations in Canada on cannabis advertising (essentially banned in all forms) vs. the regulations on alcohol advertising (what regulations?) Yet which is the more addictive and compulsive drug?
I'm Canadian as well.
You know why cannabis was deregulated? Tax revenue and to kill off the illegal sales. They knew there was a demand for the product and finally caved in and opened up legal sales so they could get in on that action.
As you rightly point out, it is already taxed to death and yet the demand continues? Outright prohibition wont work.. what are the options available?
We saw what happens with Cigarettes and taxes, black market.
Canada did a study and counted butts outside a courthouse - a very high percentage were contraband.
Unlike alcohol it have no positive value
90% of my friends smoke
30% of them smokes a lot
I wish this shit got banned worldwide and tobacco's industry C levels were gunned down
Both my parents smoked a lot (my dad smoked two packs a day). I dont know anyone who smokes.
"In 2017, the overall prevalence of smoking in Canada was 15.1%, equivalent to approximately 4.6 million Canadians. This represents a significant increase from the 2015 estimate of 13.0%."
here's a nice chart showing the gradual decline before a spike in usage??
https://uwaterloo.ca/tobacco-use-canada/adult-tobacco-use/sm...
The government has been VERY aggressive at curbing it.
https://www.tobaccocontrollaws.org/legislation/country/canad....
I noticed it is still a "cultural" issue? My ex is Chinese and when i went to China it seems everyone smokes there?
If the government is willing to accept the loss of revenue from taxes.. They can hammer away at something and make changes.
Admittedly that doesn't balance out the downsides, but there is that.
Non-smoker, for the record.
It's fathers and mothers who should be teaching their children about the dangers of alcohol and living an example worth following.