Opinion on "binge drinking"

[IceAgeComing]

I mean Beer Street and Gin Lane is an incredibly interesting tying just for all of the subtext in the thing - personally for me it's the nationalist angle on the thing that's interesting.

Also it celebrates how good ale is, and that's a message that I approve of.

[darklordoftech]

http://theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/13/france-teenage-drinkers-alcohol

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/07/increase_in_legal_drinking_age/

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yeah. oddly enough the gin craze itself was accidental creation of nationalism iirc - both in the sense that there was a patriotic backlash against French brandy and that the government encouraged brewing to raise grain prices for trade reasons.

[Santander]

http://theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/13/france-teenage-drinkers-alcohol

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/07/increase_in_legal_drinking_age/

So they raise the drinking age to 18, like in most European countries... how exactly is that "Americanization" from a random report that nobody in America read, let alone Europe?

[darklordoftech]

http://www.thelocal.es/20140403/raising-spains-drinking-age-to-21-is-absurd

[darklordoftech]

http://theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/13/france-teenage-drinkers-alcohol

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/07/increase_in_legal_drinking_age/

So they raise the drinking age to 18, like in most European countries... how exactly is that "Americanization" from a random report that nobody in America read, let alone Europe?

I can't help but get bitter when people insist that Europe's drinking laws haven't changed whatsoever.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yes because people were arguing about that?

In Britain - and especially in Scotland, where IceAge originates from - their has been serious questions about our drinking culture and how it differs from the continent, especially in Southern Europe. In fact a lot of New Labour alcohol policy was a bit of governmental societal experiments to see if the British public could be prodded into a cafe culture over the common tradition of drinking to the last drop and then smashing each other with glass bottles. But it's certainly not cause of America - if anything the NHS is a bigger cause.

[Santander]

http://theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/13/france-teenage-drinkers-alcohol

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/07/increase_in_legal_drinking_age/

So they raise the drinking age to 18, like in most European countries... how exactly is that "Americanization" from a random report that nobody in America read, let alone Europe?

I can't help but get bitter when people insist that Europe's drinking laws haven't changed whatsoever.

Nobody is saying laws haven't changed. You made an assertion that a US government report led to "Americanization" of attitudes towards alcohol in Europe without establishing any sort of evidence-based causality. Your claim also went beyond mere legislative influence (which you have yet to provide evidence of), and claimed cultural influence from a government report that literally nobody read, which is just laughable.

[IceAgeComing]

And I mean the standard thing of 16 for beer, cider and wine/18 for spirits - with an added younger age in for drinking a low ABV drink with food in a restaurant is a pretty standard thing in most of Europe still.  Indeed lots of places still don't have a legal age on the CONSUMPTION of Alcohol, merely the buying of it - I know that in Belgium its technically not illegal to consume alcohol at any age and here its a ridiculously low age - I'd like to say 5 years old, but it might have changed.

There's also the fact that you were talking about attitudes towards alcohol and you ignore the fact that legislative differences go beyond merely age but also include things like public drinking laws, and licensing hours for both pubs and clubs or off-licences.  Here things are still really quite strict (off sale curfew of any drink after 10pm seven days a week: at the weekends most pubs close at 1am and clubs at 3am, outside Edinburgh public drinking is a finable offence) whilst if you compare to Belgium (which I do because its the only other one that I'm confident about) things are a lot, lot looser (no curfew, bars seem to be able to open as late as they want and so you'd have pubs open until like 5am at weekends which was very nice as the sort of person who can't handle clubs all of the time, public drinking is legal) and those laws don't seem to have significantly shifted.  Now a significant part of that is the culture which hasn't significantly changed - you give Scotland Belgium's alcohol laws and Glasgow would be a war zone the first Friday night after they changed I'm sure whilst health outcomes would be very negative, while Belgium would find our laws incredibly strict and vigorously protest against them.  The more... liberal culture around alcohol is still present in most of Europe - when I was there the thing that the interns would do after work on a Thursday was go to the bars in front of the Parliament and drink our filthy cheap happy hour beers but then stop relatively early and go home because of work the next day; here that sort of thing would be incredibly odd on any day that's not before either a weekend or a holiday, and then you'd probably be expected to go and drink a lot more than that.

Indeed like Crabcake said the main change in the UK in the last twenty or so years has actually been a liberalisation of alcohol laws - there are apparently these mythical places that have twenty-four hour licences somewhere in this land, in Scotland there used to be an additional very strict curfew on booze at shops on Sundays, plus licence times were a lot, lot stricter than the above. 

[100% pro-life no matter what]

If alcohol were to completely go away, 90% of society's problems would be instantly cured.  In an ideal world, alcohol should be illegal, but I think that we would have had to do that in the 1700s or 1800s and that the negative externalities of doing that today would outweigh the benefits.

[JA]

If alcohol were to completely go away, 90% of society's problems would be instantly cured.  In an ideal world, alcohol should be illegal, but I think that we would have had to do that in the 1700s or 1800s and that the negative externalities of doing that today would outweigh the benefits.

Congratulations, my dude, that was one of the dumbest things I've read in quite a while.

[Santander]

If alcohol were to completely go away, 90% of society's problems would be instantly cured. still exist

[Virginiá]

If alcohol were to completely go away, 90% of society's problems would be instantly cured.  In an ideal world, alcohol should be illegal, but I think that we would have had to do that in the 1700s or 1800s and that the negative externalities of doing that today would outweigh the benefits.

Trump doesn't drink, and yet he is nothing but problems which have now found a world stage to spread to.

[darklordoftech]

If alcohol were to completely go away, 90% of society's problems would be instantly cured.  In an ideal world, alcohol should be illegal, but I think that we would have had to do that in the 1700s or 1800s and that the negative externalities of doing that today would outweigh the benefits.

Trump doesn't drink, and yet he is nothing but problems which have now found a world stage to spread to.

I always found it strange that Trump is a teetotaler and Cruz once was ticketed for underage drinking. One would expect the opposite from how they talk.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

If alcohol were to completely go away, 90% of society's problems would be instantly cured.  In an ideal world, alcohol should be illegal, but I think that we would have had to do that in the 1700s or 1800s and that the negative externalities of doing that today would outweigh the benefits.

Trump doesn't drink, and yet he is nothing but problems which have now found a world stage to spread to.

I always found it strange that Trump is a teetotaler and Cruz once was ticketed for underage drinking. One would expect the opposite from how they talk.

He holds a beer high and he drinks it! Boozin' Ted!

[heatcharger]

FF on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. HP rest of the week, although there are exceptions.

(how can you tell I don't give a crap about pro football...)

This is absolutely correct.

[Green Line]

Good, in moderation.

[DavidB.]

FF on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night. HP rest of the week, although there are exceptions.

Got the club going up on a Tuesday.

[Idaho Conservative]

It is certainly harmful to the individual drinking but its not the like government could (or should) stop it.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

If alcohol were to completely go away, 90% of society's problems would be instantly cured. still exist become unbearable

[Idaho Conservative]

If alcohol were to completely go away, 90% of society's problems would be instantly cured. still exist become unbearable

ha ha