Trends in Regulation and Consumption
In the postwar world, alcohol consumption and policies have reflected broad social, cultural, and economic shifts as well as specific national and local conditions. They include the baby-boom generation and the decline of fertility rates, which transformed the age structures of almost all Western populations. Demographic movements, including the migration of millions of non-Europeans with distinctive drinking or nondrinking patterns, have had an impact on many European societies. And while official attitudes toward alcohol consumption have generally shifted in more liberal directions since the 1960s, there have also been countervailing tendencies related to specific issues such as drinking and driving and what is called binge-drinking. Finally, some societies faced significant alcohol-related challenges and responded with tighter controls. The governments of the Soviet Union and its successor state, Russia, continued the century-long saga of trying to reduce alcohol consumption among their people and lessen its social and economic effects.
In the immediate postwar period, from 1945 to about 1960, alcohol remained or became a standard feature of daily life in most Western societies. Cocktails, which had been features of the prohibition era, continued to be more popular in the United States than anywhere else, and middle-class men (and fewer women) enjoyed the “cocktail hour” at the end of the workday. The most popular cocktails—martinis, manhattans, and old-fashioneds—became associated with business and suburban sociability. The distinction between the bar, lounge, or country club—the prime locations for middle-class public drinking—and the home was blurred. Advertisements increasingly implied that whiskey and other spirits were part of domestic hospitality.1 Although we must assume that many Americans drank at home as a matter of course throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we must also remember that, since the mid-1800s, the dominant discourses in the United States had portrayed drinking alcohol as behavior bordering on the pathological. Two of the unintended consequences of prohibition might have been to normalize public drinking and drinking by women, but consuming alcohol in the privacy of the home, shielded from public surveillance, presented different kinds of dangers.
Reflecting the persistent belief that women were the repositories and guardians of public and family morality, churches and temperance groups placed the onus on women to ensure that drinking in their homes was moderate. As mothers, they were to steer their children away from temptations to experiment with alcohol; as wives, they were to understand how stressful jobs might lead their husbands to drink heavily; and as hostesses, they were to ensure that any alcohol served in their homes was consumed moderately. Clearly success in these challenges was not universal: surveys in the 1950s showed that high proportions of young people below the minimum drinking age consumed alcohol, many with their parents’ consent. A survey of college students in 1953 found that 79 to 92 percent of males and 40 to 89 percent of females drank alcohol with some frequency, which increased with family income. A study the next year in Nassau County, Long Island, found that 68 percent of fourteen-year-olds had parental permission to drink alcohol at home, and 29 percent were permitted to drink alcohol away from home on occasion.2 Although it is difficult to measure and describe, in the 1950s drinking seems to have been culturally accepted in the United States for the first time in a century and a half. There were, of course, constant warnings about heavy drinking and alcoholism, but one of the worst effects of these behaviors—domestic violence against women—was scarcely mentioned until the 1970s.
The United States and France were often contrasted in their attitudes toward alcohol: on one hand, Americans were thought of as mistrustful of alcohol, willing to support prohibition (even if they eventually recanted), and cautious in their policies; on the other hand, the French were relaxed, full of joie de vivre, and heavy but happy drinkers who had integrated alcohol seamlessly into their work and private lives. After German occupation and the fascist Vichy regime, we might have expected the postwar French governments to liberate their citizens from the tight regulations imposed on alcohol production and consumption adopted during the war by Marshal Pétain. Instead, the transitional regime of General Charles de Gaulle confirmed the Vichy policies, limited the number of bars (which had fallen from more than 455,000 in 1940 to 314,000 in 1946), and gave financial support to France’s main antialcohol organization.3 But with the return of parliamentary government and popular elections, French administrations began to liberalize policies. In 1951 the fundamental Vichy regulations of 1941 were repealed, and alcohol advertising (even of spirits-based beverages such as pastis) was again permitted. Wine producers were allowed to expand their vineyards, and production of all kinds of alcohol was encouraged by the state. Wine was again praised as France’s national beverage, and even the entry of Coca-Cola to the French market was delayed several years for fear that it would compete with wine.4
While such measures can be understood as integral to rebuilding France’s economy and exports after the war (it was generally assumed everywhere that French wine was the best), the government also acknowledged the costs of heavy drinking. While it encouraged alcohol consumption, the government in 1954 passed a law that provided for the compulsory treatment of alcoholics who were a danger to themselves or to society. In the face of determined attempts by sections of France’s medical profession to show that wine was a healthy beverage, a broader approach was adopted by a new government, including restrictions on alcohol production and consumption and education programs.5 (The prime minister, Pierre Mendès France, provocatively brought a glass of milk to the rostrum of the National Assembly.) Throughout the 1950s, French alcohol policy was informed more than ever by antialcohol principles, and although the number of bars and cafés serving alcohol continued its steady decline, per capita consumption of pure alcohol in France did not change appreciably. In 1951 it was 26.7 liters; it peaked at 28.8 liters in 1955, and in 1961 it was 27.7 liters. It did not drop below 26 liters until 1971, when it stood at 24.8 liters.6
In the United Kingdom, beer production in the 1940s peaked in 1945, then declined steadily through much of the 1950s before rebounding in the 1960s. Only in the 1970s did output exceed the level reached in 1945, and that, of course, served a considerably larger population. At the same time, there was a clear perception of increased public drunkenness in Britain during the 1950s and early 1960s. Between 1955 and 1957, convictions for being drunk in public rose by 27 percent, and between 1960 and 1962 they rose by 23 percent. In each case they subsequently declined, but only slightly. Much of the increase was attributed to record numbers of teenagers in the population, thanks to the postwar baby boom.7
Throughout Western societies in the 1960s, alcohol policies, like policies regarding sexual behavior and social life in general, began to be liberalized. In that and the following decades, the minimum legal drinking age was lowered in a number of countries, and many of the residual negative connotations of alcohol fell away. The behavioral backdrop to concerns about patterns of drinking was a general stabilization in total alcohol consumption throughout much of the world since the 1970s and 1980s. In some countries, there are countervailing trends that cancel each other out, such as an increase in wine consumption and a decrease in beer and spirits, resulting in little or no overall change in the volume of pure alcohol consumed from all sources. That said, there are vast differences on a national and regional basis; sometimes these reflect policies that ban alcohol consumption entirely (as in many Muslim countries), and sometimes they indicate policies that hardly limit access to alcohol at all. In very general terms, the regions with the lowest alcohol consumption (under 7.5 liters of pure alcohol a year) by adults are Africa, the Middle East, and South and East Asia. Low-average consuming regions (7.5 to 9.9 liters) are North America, Brazil, and South Africa. High-average consumers (10 to 12.5 liters) are Argentina, Nigeria, Australia, Spain, Italy, and Sweden, while the countries with the highest levels of alcohol consumption (over 12.5 liters of pure alcohol per adult each year) are Russia, Portugal, France, and almost all central and eastern European countries.8
Such statistics give us a general idea of the global distribution of aggregated alcohol consumption patterns, but they conceal important variations within countries by region, class, gender, and generation. For example, in Italy, alcohol consumption declined steadily from 20 liters a head in the 1960s to less than half that in 2006, but consumption is higher among older men than among younger consumers. Unless younger consumers increase their alcohol consumption as they age, overall consumption in Italy can be expected to continue to decline. In Italy, as almost everywhere else, women consumed considerably less alcohol than men. A quarter of Italian women report they have not consumed alcohol in the preceding twelve months, compared to a tenth of men.9 A similar effect is found in the United Kingdom, where in 2010, men between the ages of forty-five and sixty-four were the most regular and highest consumers of alcohol, compared with men in other age groups. The same was true of women.10
In the United States, alcohol consumption was not only lower than Italy’s throughout the whole period but rose from 8 liters of pure alcohol in 1961 to 10 liters in 1981 before falling to 9 liters in 2006. American rates of abstention from alcohol were much higher than the Italian: two-fifths of American women and more than a quarter of men reported having consumed no alcohol in the preceding year.11 In broad terms, then, about a third of American adults do not drink alcohol, compared to less than a fifth of Italians.
Some of the explanations for national, regional, and demographic differences seem obvious. Many Muslim countries report no alcohol consumption simply because alcohol is prohibited, and any consumption must be clandestine. The relatively high level of abstention from alcohol in the United States is partly the result of the presence of several alcohol-averse religious denominations, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), which has 6 million adherents. It is possible that the presence of low-consuming ethnic groups in the United States also contributes to the rate of alcohol abstention. But it is clear that broad categories such as “Asian” and “Hispanic” populations, both frequently associated with low alcohol consumption, comprise many different populations with varying traditions, histories, and cultures of drinking. Moreover, drinking patterns sometimes change as minority populations become more assimilated into the dominant culture. In France, the increased immigration by Muslims from North Africa since the 1960s—there are between 5 and 6 million Muslims, about a third of them devout, in the country of 66 million inhabitants—has contributed to the steady decline in France’s per capita alcohol consumption. Total alcohol consumption from all sources in France fell from 25 liters per capita in 1961 to 14 liters in 2006, almost entirely the result of a decline in wine consumption. One of the implications has been the disappearance of tens of thousands of cafés and bars and major shifts in patterns of alcohol-centered sociability.12
As alcohol consumption stabilized in many countries, fell in others, and rose in only a few, many governments relaxed their alcohol policies. This easing of restrictions was not necessarily acknowledgment that societies could afford to be less vigilant about alcohol because it was no longer being consumed in ever-greater volumes, but it was probably part of the general tendency toward less regulation of the personal lives of citizens. Since the 1960s, laws relating to sexual behavior and orientation have been relaxed, censorship has lightened, and laws that discriminated on the basis of ethnicity and gender have been repealed.
Regarding alcohol, one of the changes was a reduction in the role of the state in its sale. In a number of countries and their subjurisdictions (states and provinces), the sale of alcohol had been carried out by government-owned retailing outlets, generally known as liquor monopolies. From the 1960s onward, many of these systems were dismantled or modified, often after much public debate. One universal result of the transfer of retailing was a significant increase in the number of places where alcohol could be purchased, and there is some evidence that easier availability of alcohol promotes higher levels of consumption. Overall, however, there is no hard-and-fast rule that the privatization of liquor retailing leads to a higher level of consumption; this has occurred in some places, while in other places, consumption has either not changed or has declined following privatization. In the United States, a series of states surrendered the sale of alcohol to private retailers. In Canada, Alberta gave up its role in retailing alcohol—the first and only province to do so—in 1994, while some other provinces maintained their provincial alcohol system but also began to permit privately owned liquor stores to operate.
Another area of liberalization since the 1960s has been a widespread reduction in the legal drinking age, which until that point had been 21 years almost everywhere that drinking was permitted and a minimum age legally prescribed. (In Muslim countries, where alcohol consumption is prohibited, a minimum legal drinking age would be redundant.) In the United States, almost all states set 21 years as the minimum legal drinking age following the repeal of prohibition. However, after a 1971 amendment to the U.S. Constitution that lowered the voting age to 18 years, many states reduced the drinking age to the same level. By 1975, twenty-nine states (more than half) had done so, although a few lowered the drinking age to only 19 or 20 years. This prompted a reaction from advocacy groups, largely on the ground that automobile accidents increased when the drinking age was lowered. Between 1976 and 1983, nineteen states raised the minimum legal drinking age back to 21 years. Setting the minimum drinking age falls to the jurisdiction of individual states, but fears that young people who were underage in their own state could drive to another state where they could buy alcohol legally led the federal government to step in. In 1984, it passed the Uniform Drinking Age Act, which deprived states of 10 percent of their federal highway funding if they did not conform to the 21-year-old rule. All the holdouts fell into line.
Individual American states have followed different trajectories in terms of the minimum drinking age. In Virginia, for example, the age for buying or drinking any alcohol was set at 21 years in 1934, after prohibition was repealed, but in 1974 it was lowered to 18 years for the purchase of beer. In 1981 the drinking age with respect to beer was maintained at 18 years if the beer was consumed where it was bought (such as in a bar) but raised to 19 years if the beer was purchased for consumption elsewhere. In 1983 the minimum age was raised to 19 years for all beer purchases. In 1985, following the federal Uniform Drinking Age Act, the minimum age was raised to 21 years, but anyone who had been able to purchase beer and was under the age of 21 years was permitted to continue to purchase beer legally—to avoid a situation in which a 19- or 20-year-old person might have been able to buy beer but then was forbidden to do so until reaching the age of 21 years. In 1987 the legal drinking age for all alcoholic beverages in Virginia reverted to 21 years, as it had been more than 50 years earlier.13
There are not only global variations in the minimum drinking age but also significant national differences in the way an alcoholic beverage is defined. Although a small number of countries do not define alcoholic beverages at all, the great majority do, and they do so in terms of the percentage of alcohol by volume in the drink. Most countries classify a beverage as alcoholic if it contains at least 4.5 percent alcohol, although many opt for a lower threshold. In Germany and France, for example, it is 1.2 percent alcohol by volume; in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, it is 0.5 percent; Italy, which defines a beverage as alcoholic if it has as little as 0.1 percent alcohol by volume, is much more restrictive. Other countries, in contrast, allow a higher threshold. They include Hungary and Eritrea (5 percent), Belarus (6 percent), Dominican Republic (9 percent), and Nicaragua (12 percent).14 In these cases, relatively low-alcohol beverages, such as beers, are not considered alcoholic for the purposes of sale, consumption, and regulation. Needless to say, variations like these lead to difficulties when we compare alcohol consumption rates transnationally.
Debates about and changes in the minimum drinking age focus on a very small tranche of the population. Dropping the minimum age from 21 to 19 years is essentially a statement that people aged 19 and 20 years are considered old enough to consume alcohol responsibly. It is often argued that if people are considered responsible enough to drive or vote or perform military service, they ought to be old enough to buy and drink alcohol. But although the general tendency (apart from the United States) has been to lower the minimum drinking age, there have been widespread public and policy debates about the relationship between young people and alcohol. It might be argued that this is a new phenomenon in the history of alcohol. Two issues in particular have been associated primarily with younger consumers: drinking and driving, and binge-drinking, which is often defined as the consumption of four or five standard alcoholic drinks in a single drinking session.
Automobile ownership increased rapidly everywhere after the Second World War, and by the 1970s the number of deaths and injuries on the road was causing serious concern. In England and Wales, for example, driving offenses involving alcohol (such as being unfit to drive and driving while under undue influence of alcohol) rose from 3,257 in 1953 to 9,276 in 1963 and to 65,248 in 1973.15 The increase can be partly explained by an increase in the number of vehicles on the road and perhaps by more rigorous enforcement, but it was also the result of a more precise definition of alcoholic impairment. A 1962 law allowed the police to use blood-alcohol tests in court, and any result of 150mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood was considered evidence of impairment. (The threshold was reduced to 80mg of alcohol in 1967.) But blood tests were permitted only when there had been an accident, and the police had to continue to use other, impressionistic evidence (putting a finger to the nose or being able to walk in a straight line) in other cases. Even though more certain measures of impairment might have captured more drivers who were unfit to be behind the wheel, it seemed evident to many people that there was an epidemic of drinking and driving. This was the very sentiment that caused the federal government in the United States to coerce states to adopt 21 years as the uniform minimum drinking age in 1984.
One of the important advocacy groups to reflect and intensify concern about drinking and driving was (and is) Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Founded in California in 1980 by a woman whose daughter had been killed by an intoxicated driver, MADD was not only a major force behind the adoption of the uniform minimum drinking age in the United States but was influential in having almost all states toughen their laws regarding drinking and driving. Many American states were perceived as being too lenient with intoxicated drivers (the driver who killed the daughter of MADD’s founder was sentenced to two years in jail), and some began to mandate jail sentences for first offenders. In 2000, under pressure from MADD and other organizations, the federal government stepped into alcohol policy again, this time to require states to legislate a maximum 0.08 percent blood-alcohol content for drivers. At that point, the common maximum blood-alcohol was 0.15 percent, a level at which few adults have the ability to drive an automobile competently. The new maximum was half that, and the federal government again used the threat of withdrawing highway funding to persuade states to adopt the new level: the longer states took to comply, the more of their federal highway funding they would lose.
MADD was part of a more general campaign launched in the 1980s and 1990s to stop young people, in particular, from driving after they had been drinking. Its emphasis has been on education, and it stresses personal responsibility for driving while impaired. MADD has achieved a positive reputation in the United States and Canada, where it has partnered with schools and the police in various projects. Since 2000, however, it has attracted criticism for shifting its focus from drinking and driving to drinking per se, and it has become a vocal advocate for action against underage drinking without any reference to driving.
Drinking and driving, and high rates of highway mortality led other countries to take action at this time. Most countries set the blood-alcohol concentration limit at between 0.05 and 0.08 percent, but a number (including Norway, Sweden, Russia, and Brazil) have established a zero-tolerance regime, in which very small traces of alcohol in the blood can lead to prosecution. In Brazil, the Lei Seca (Dry Law) of 2008 allows for drivers to be arrested and charged if they have a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.02 percent. Penalties include imprisonment for up to three years, a hefty fine, and suspension of the driver’s license for one year. The law also forbids the sale of alcoholic drinks anywhere along the rural stretches of federal roads and highways.16
Concern about the frequency of driving while intoxicated led even France, which had been one of the more lenient countries regarding alcohol, to adopt more restrictive legislation in the 1990s. The Evin Law (named for the minister of health) dealt with both tobacco and alcohol, and it was passed when alcohol consumption in France was steadily falling. The law struck directly at alcohol advertising by prohibiting it on television and in cinemas, imposing rigid control over messages and images, and requiring all advertisements to include a message to the effect that alcohol abuse is dangerous to health. Alcohol advertising could not be directed at young people, and alcoholic beverage producers could not sponsor sports events. Advertising was still permitted on billboards and at events such as wine fairs, and in 2009 the law was amended to permit alcohol advertisements on French-based websites as long as they were not directed at young people.
The second major alcohol issue associated with young people, binge-drinking or heavy episodic drinking, refers to drinking significant volumes of alcohol in a short period with the primary purpose of getting drunk. Concern for binge-drinking (the term is rejected by some alcohol policy-makers) has some of the characteristics of a moral panic, an inflated assessment of some form of behavior, such as the gin-craze of early eighteenth-century England might well have been. At that time, middle- and upper-class men deplored—and undoubtedly exaggerated—the extent of public drinking by women, workers, and the poor, even though they themselves might have regularly drunk themselves into oblivion in the privacy of their homes and clubs.
Similarly, the modern focus on young people drinking at a binge level (commonly defined in the United States as five standard drinks for males and four for females in one session) usually ignores the reality that many older people regularly consume that much alcohol at an evening meal; it can almost be achieved by consuming half a bottle of wine containing 14.5 percent alcohol with dinner. In the United Kingdom, a more expansive threshold of eight standard drinks for men and six for women is widely used, while some organizations suggest that binge-drinking is involved any time an individual’s blood-alcohol concentration reaches 0.08 percent, the common threshold for legally driving a vehicle. This last definition more effectively takes into account the period over which alcohol is consumed, the state of the drinker, and whether the alcohol was consumed with or without food. Some definitions refer to consuming a specified number of drinks in a single session without distinguishing between sessions that last one or two hours and those that last all night.
However it is defined, binge-drinking was presented as a problem affecting young people in several countries in the early 2000s, and there was particular attention to students, many of whom are below the legal minimum drinking age, and young people in their early twenties. An international survey of student health in 2004 found a high proportion of students aged thirteen to fifteen years in many countries had consumed alcohol at least once in the preceding thirty days. They ranged from under 10 percent of males and females in places such as Senegal and Myanmar to rates above 50 percent in Seychelles, Uruguay, Argentina, and several Caribbean countries.17 In Europe the rates varied from 75 percent in the Czech Republic to 17 percent in Iceland. As far as binge-drinking is concerned, in a 1995 survey, 29 percent of European students aged fifteen to seventeen years reported consuming five or more alcoholic drinks during one session in the preceding thirty days. The same survey reported a rise to 41 percent in 2007 and a slight decline to 38 percent in 2011. In only one country, Sweden, did females outperform males as binge-drinkers.18
Responses to what has been presented as an epidemic of binge-drinking have varied. In Canada and the United States, university authorities have attempted to curb alcohol consumption, particularly at times of the academic year—such as the first week—when consumption was historically high. In the United Kingdom, the government in 2011 lowered the tax on beer having an alcohol content of 2.8 percent or lower and raised the tax on beer that had 7.5 percent alcohol or higher. The aim was to deter the use of the higher-alcohol beers that were thought to be leading to problem drinking and encourage the consumption of lower-alcohol beers, without penalizing the great majority of beer-drinkers who opted for medium-strength beer. In France, the Evin Law also addressed drinking by young people by prohibiting the advertising of alcohol in media directed toward them.
Other reforms to alcohol policies in the postwar period varied according to national or regional conditions. In New Zealand, regulations enacted during the First World War had required bars to close at 6:00 PM, Monday to Friday, and remain closed on Saturdays and Sundays. The initial purpose was to prevent absenteeism from wartime work following a night’s drinking, and in the following half-century the policy was maintained for other reasons—institutional inertia, for one, and because it encouraged men to return to their homes and families rather than spend the evening drinking with their friends. On the less positive side, such early closings gave rise to what was known locally as “the six o’clock swill,” as drinkers—almost all male—consumed as much beer as they could in the hour or less between the end of the workday and 6:00 PM. In effect, the policy promoted adult binge-drinking on a mass scale.
By the 1960s, however, the policy seemed outmoded and untenable. The beginning of a restaurant culture in New Zealand meant that diners could drink alcohol with meals until late at night, and private clubs were permitted serve alcohol beyond 6:00 PM. The increasing number of foreign tourists found the 6:00 PM bar closing time irritating and inconvenient. In a 1967 referendum, two-thirds of voters supported extending drinking hours to 10:00 PM, the first of a series of extensions of drinking hours.
More serious alcohol issues arose in the Soviet Union in the last decades of the twentieth century. High per capita alcohol consumption began to play havoc with public health and the economy, and by the 1980s it was a major contributor to the collapse of the Soviet economic and political system.19 This was no new phenomenon, as we have seen: heavy drinking had been characteristic of Russia/the Soviet Union for centuries. Of course, there were great regional and ethnic variations in such a sprawling, multinational empire. Muslim regions had a much lower level of consumption, as did the Jewish population, while Latvians, whose main drink was vodka, easily outpaced the wine-drinking Georgians in total alcohol consumption. Considered as a whole, however, Soviet citizens had one of the highest alcohol consumption rates in the world, and even more important, it rose more quickly than any other country’s from the 1950s to the 1980s. The best estimate of consumption of alcohol (per person over the age of fourteen) from legal and illicit sources suggests that from 7.3 liters of pure alcohol in 1955, consumption rose to 10.2 liters in 1965, 14.6 liters in 1975, and 15.2 liters in 1979.20
Every Soviet leader after Stalin’s death in 1953 made lukewarm attempts to rein in consumption. In 1958 Nikita Khrushchev called for a campaign against alcoholism, began a program of alcohol education, and limited the sale of alcohol in shops and restaurants. In 1960 the criminal code was amended to provide for compulsory therapy for anyone convicted more than once of being drunk. Under Leonid Brezhnev (Soviet premier from 1964 to 1982 and whose alcohol consumption was notorious), the government intensified penalties for public drunkenness (under the rubric of “hooliganism”) and established a chain of rehabilitation camps where convicted persistent drinkers could be sent for therapy that included forced labor. In 1972 the government ordered the reduction of vodka output and the phasing out of stronger vodkas altogether, with an increase in the production of wine, beer, and nonalcoholic drinks to compensate.
The two short-lived governments (1982 to 1985) that followed Brezhnev—one of these premiers, Konstantin Chernenko, probably died of cirrhosis of the liver brought on by chronic heavy drinking—saw the beginnings of a more radical approach to the social problems of high alcohol use. It began as an open discussion of the state of Soviet society and recognition that it had still not, sixty years after the Revolution, sloughed off problems such as gender inequality and alcoholism, issues that Marxists had long associated with capitalist society. A campaign to reduce alcohol abuse included attempts to reduce absenteeism, and a more systematic antialcoholism movement began to emerge. It was none too soon; by the 1980s, alcohol was a major contributor to widespread health problems and to weaknesses in the Soviet economy. Mortality rates actually rose in the Soviet Union, the first time such a thing had happened outside the context of a major catastrophe such as famine or war. The death rates for men over forty increased by 20 to 25 percent between 1965 and 1989, and death rates for women over fifty also rose, though more modestly. Alcohol was not the sole cause of these changes—smoking and poor health services were also implicated—but it is considered to have been a major contributor.
When the Soviet Union’s last premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, assumed power in 1985, he inherited an antialcohol campaign that showed some signs of early success—small reductions in consumption and in alcohol-related crime—and he made it one of the priorities of his administration. Fending off occasional radical proposals for total prohibition, Gorbachev supported a complex of policies that both encouraged and coerced. On the educational side, various bodies, such as the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Pedagogy, were given the task of mounting a campaign to demonstrate the harm that drinking did to health, social order, morality, and the economy. Efforts were made to improve leisure and sports facilities so that young people, in particular, would have more alternatives to drinking. Newspapers, radio, and television were instructed to intensify their antialcohol messages, and filmmakers were forbidden to portray heavy drinking in a positive light.21
On the coercive side of the new campaign, new regulations restricted the hours that alcohol could be sold (only after 2:00 PM on workdays), the amount that one person could buy, and the places it could be consumed. Drinking in public was subject to fines, as was drinking in the workplace. Anyone so drunk that they had to be detained overnight was to be charged for the cost of accommodations. A national temperance movement was revived, and by the middle of 1986 it claimed to have 11 million members in 350,000 branches throughout the Soviet Union. The Communist Party set an example by banning alcohol at public functions, including state and diplomatic events, and adopting much sterner measures (including dismissal) against party members and officials who abused alcohol or tolerated abuse. Thousands were expelled from the party as the campaign gathered momentum.22 Reducing the availability of alcohol was fundamental to this broad-based campaign. A first step, in mid-1985, was a price increase for vodka and other liquors, but not beer or wine, which had a lower alcohol content. Further increases took effect a year later. State production of vodka was cut to 14.2 million liters by 1988, from 23.8 million liters in 1985, and wine production was almost halved.23
By the end of 1986 the Soviet government reported impressive results: the consumption of vodka and wine had fallen by a third, as had employee absenteeism, while crime was down by a quarter. But reports throughout the country were mixed. From some regions came descriptions of continued extensive consumption in the face of failed attempts to curb drinking; from other regions came barely credible reports of amazing successes, such as entire bodies of miners who had given up alcohol completely. In such areas, output was said to have improved, and productivity quotas were exceeded. On the demographic front, there were real improvements in the late 1980s. Mortality rates reversed the steady rise they had seen since the 1970s, and deaths resulting from workplace accidents declined. The incidence of fatal heart disease fell, and deaths from alcohol poisoning and from more general alcohol-related causes were halved. The birthrate rose, and there were marked improvements in the health of infants and the proportion that survived the first year of life.24
Yet the clandestine production of illicit alcohol undermined the campaign against alcohol. In times when alcohol was freely available, it was estimated that samogon, the illicit liquor widely produced in rural areas, accounted for about a third of the total amount of alcohol consumed in the Soviet Union. By 1988 some estimates set its production at up to 50 percent of the (reduced) state output. As the availability of legal alcohol contracted, illicit production spread to regions (such as Latvia) where it had been virtually unknown and to the cities. This vast underground industry depended on supplies of sugar that was produced in massive quantities in the Soviet Union from beets. It is estimated that by 1987, a tenth of the country’s sugar output was being used to make samogon. Desperate citizens who could not obtain illicit liquor turned to commodities that contained alcohol—cologne, hair tonic, and window-washing fluid among them—often with serious or even fatal consequences.
The reports that flowed in to the government must have detailed both real achievements and significant failures. Perhaps they seemed to offset each other, because by 1988 the campaign was judged to have produced “a healthier moral atmosphere in society” while failing to achieve “radical changes.” But rather than press forward, the government scaled the campaign back. There was a sense that public support was sagging, and the reduction of alcohol production more than had been envisaged at first had led to increased demand and widespread illicit production. There was, too, the fact that the state had forfeited an estimated 2 billion rubles in revenues from lost alcohol taxes. The campaign would continue but would be rebalanced to stress education and encouragement rather than coercion. Critics likened the repressive measures to the forced collectivization programs of the 1930s and referred to the police crackdown on samogon as a war against the people. Beyond the objections in principle was recognition that the Russian state was, once again, waging a losing battle against alcohol.
The first adjustment to the campaign permitted wine, beer, and brandy to be sold in food stores again, and soon afterward the production of liquor and wines was allowed to rise. Production of vodka and other spirits increased by 50 percent from 1988 to 1990, but although consumption rose, it did not reach its pre-campaign levels. In 1985 Russians had drunk 8.8 liters of alcohol per capita. That had fallen to 3.9 liters in 1987, but it rose to only 5.6 liters in 1990, after restrictions were eased.25 The health and other gains that had been reported when the full campaign was in place were quickly reversed. The mortality rate rose, the fertility rate fell, and by 1991 the Soviet population was actually in decline.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a freer market in alcohol was introduced to the Russian Federation. The state’s monopoly on production ended, and in 1992, home-brewing was decriminalized. Imported alcohol began to appear more regularly, and before long, imported vodka made up as much as 60 percent of the Russian market. Under these conditions, alcohol production and consumption began to rise. From 7 liters of legal pure alcohol in 1991, consumption hit 11 liters in 1995 and hovered above 10 liters through 2006. To the legal alcohol must be added illicit drink, which is calculated to be a third to a half of the legal volume. This would give adult Russians an average consumption of about 16 liters of pure alcohol in the early 2000s, compared with a European average of 12 liters.26 Another way to put it is that the average Russian citizen consumed a bottle of vodka every two days.27 But when the abstention rate of 40 percent is taken into account, the average Russian drinker consumed almost a bottle of vodka each day. It was little wonder that alcohol-related crime and marriage breakdown bounced back to earlier rates and traffic accidents attributed to intoxication increased dramatically.
Under the leadership of Vladimir Putin (2000 to 2008 and from 2012), a new campaign against alcohol was undertaken. There was some discussion of banning the production and sale of alcohol; but in the meantime, taxes on it were increased, and alcohol duties almost quadrupled between 2012 and 2014. Showing that he had learned from previous unsuccessful campaigns to reduce alcohol consumption, Putin argued that increasing taxes gradually, rather than radically, would be less likely to produce a growth in illicit alcohol production.28 In 2012 all alcohol advertising on the Russian internet was forbidden, and as of 2013, newspapers were no longer permitted to carry alcohol advertisements.
The government faced opposition to its campaign from a variety of sources, including small and large retailers. In 2013, sidewalk and roadside kiosks were prohibited from selling beer, which had accounted for about 40 percent of their revenue. In theory, this benefited larger stores, but their sales of alcohol (which accounted for up to a fifth of their total revenues) were also hit because the same law raised the minimum price of a half-liter of vodka by 36 percent and reclassified beer from a food to an alcoholic beverage.29 This meant that beer could not be sold in any store between 11:00 PM and 8:00 AM.
Such reforms are the latest episodes in the long-running saga of Russian alcohol policies, but it is clear that the Russian authorities are not alone in their concerns about patterns and levels of alcohol consumption. Concern for alcohol-related behavior—whether it is drinking and driving, youth drinking, or the effects of alcohol on economic productivity—crosses national and ideological frontiers. What James Nicholls says of England—that although the “drink question” receded after the 1940s, “by the start of the twenty-first century, drink was back on the political agenda with a vengeance”—is true in a broader geographical sense.30
At the same time, arguments for the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption made a comeback. Alcohol was treated far more suspiciously by the medical profession in the twentieth century than at any time before, and in general it was considered to be more problematic than beneficial for personal health. Far from the days when specific wines and spirits were prescribed for specific maladies, alcohol was recommended, if at all, as a pleasure that might—in carefully measured moderation—ease the stresses of daily life. But doctors were increasingly likely to recommend to their patients that they not drink alcohol.
A major event that transformed medical (and social) attitudes toward alcohol was the discovery of “the French paradox” and its description on American television in 1991. The paradox was that although the diet and lifestyle of French people ought to predispose them to heart disease, French rates of cardiovascular disease were only a third of American levels. The French smoked more than Americans, were physically less active, and ate a diet as rich in fats, from cheese, fried foods, and other products. They also drank more alcohol, but the big difference was the proportion of their alcohol intake that was made up of wine, and specifically red wine. Leading French medical scientists argued that resveratrol, a phenol found in the skin of black grapes and present in varying concentrations in red wine, was the reason for the low incidence of heart disease among populations with higher consumption rates of red wine.
The airing of these findings in the United States in 1991 on the popular television show Sixty Minutes produced an increase in sales of red wine: they rose by 40 percent in the United States in the following year. The effect spread to other countries, and many people began to drink red wine on a regular basis as a preventative health measure. For those who did not want to drink alcohol, there was a tablet made from powdered wine that was purported to provide the same benefits as two glasses of red wine.31
Because the French paradox ran so counter to trends in medical thinking about alcohol, it proved highly controversial. It was argued that the statistics of heart disease in France were grossly understated and that there really was no paradox: the French had a shorter tradition of eating fried foods, and once the effects were embedded in the populations, their rates of heart disease would rise; it was also impossible to isolate one element, in this case resveratrol, to explain a complex phenomenon. In the United States, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the federal agency that regulated alcohol nationally, challenged Serge Renaud, a leading French scientist who had appeared on the television program that aired the French paradox for the first time, to prove his claims for red wine. In 1994 Renaud published research in the Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, showing that 20 to 30 grams (two or three glasses) of wine a day could reduce the risk of dying from a heart attack by about 40 percent. He argued that the wine acts on platelets in the blood and helps prevent clotting. Renaud’s later research on a large sample of middle-aged men in France not only reinforced the French paradox but suggested that moderate consumption of red wine also protects against most cancers.
Current medical opinion suggests that drinking moderate amounts of wine on a regular basis does protect many people against heart disease and some cancers. All other variables being constant, moderate alcohol consumption is a healthier option than abstaining from alcohol. Higher than moderate levels of consumption, however, not only neutralize these benefits but actually predispose individuals toward other medical problems. In this light, alcohol—particularly wine—has been restored to the position it had occupied before the nineteenth century, when physicians prescribed it for specific purposes as well as for its perceived benefits as a general tonic.
In many respects, alcohol in the modern world resonates with the issues we can track over the past centuries and millennia. There are the familiar concerns about consumption, expressed more sharply in some places than others, but present almost everywhere. Today the dangers of alcohol are described in much more precise and sometimes different terms: the risks of liver and heart disease are spelled out graphically, as are the dangers of drinking and driving. There is far less worry about women drinking and losing their moral bearings and more stress on men using alcohol as a means of exploiting women sexually. There is far more concern, generally, about alcohol consumption by young people. On the positive side, and after a hiatus of almost a century, alcohol is back in the pharmacy. The French paradox opened a Pandora’s box, and soon it was not only red wine that was beneficial but alcohol in general, as long as it was consumed in moderation. Any discourse about abuse or excess implies a level of alcohol consumption that is acceptable. The search for moderation has informed almost all policies that did not ban alcohol altogether, and the search for a definition of “moderation” and the means to persuade people to drink moderately at most lie at the heart of the history of alcohol.