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| 1961 ad from House & Garden |
I have made my hatred of alcohol clear in many blogs. Besides the so-called redeeming quality of one glass a wine a day being good for your health, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to ever imbibe. I am not being holier than thou because we all know my addiction to cigarettes, but my smoking a butt does not impair my brain and cause me to beat up people in a drunken rage or drive a car recklessly. That said, because the United States decided to repeal the 18th amendment and return the right to citizens to drink, according to the Volstead Act, “intoxicating alcohol,” then I feel the government should sleep in the bed they made and not try to regulate caffeinated alcoholic drinks and alcohol infused whipped cream.
It is timely for this subject to come up now because it was almost exactly 77 years ago on December 5, 1933 that Utah became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment which repealed the 18th prohibiting the sale of alcohol. This gave the amendment the three-fourths majority of state's approval that it needed to pass. Just a few years later, Alcoholics Anonymous was founded to try to deal with the problems of the addiction. So while we are all aware of the horrors of drinking, almost everybody still does it. Since the government has decided alcohol is legal, then I find the latest forays into banning particular products as incongruous.
All of this brouhaha (notice the homonym pun) is because of Four Loko, a high-octane alcoholic beverage popular among binge-drinking college students that is produced by Chicago-based Phusion Projects. Federal regulators have decided that caffeine is an “unsafe food addictive” when combined with the malt alcoholic beverage. So it is okay to drink alcohol, but not be kept awake while one does it.
Last week, the Illinois Senate voted to ban caffeinated alcoholic beverages in Illinois. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Ira Silverstein, D-Chicago, would prohibit the production, manufacture and distribution of such products passed unopposed. Since the bill passed by a vote of 51-0, it is assured that the Illinois House will also pass it when they resume their session in January.
There are now rumblings that the next item the government is looking to ban is alcohol-infused whipped cream products. Two are currently on the market: one that is 18% alcohol and the other 15%. At that proof level, they are two to three times more potent than beer, but much less intoxicating than whiskey or gin.
According to CBS News, Dr. Anita Barry, a director at the Boston Public Health Department, said alcohol-infused whipped cream needs to be monitored for potential abuse. Talk about an oxymoron! The statement is self-contradictory because alcohol consumption is already abusive! If the Boston Public Health Department is worried, then ban all alcohol.
I tasted the alcohol-infused whipped cream at my friend Karen Phelan's house on Thanksgiving. I squirted the chocolate whiskey flavored topping on sliced grapes. It was delicious! I squirted a second time. It was even more delicious. But I did not squirt a third because I don’t like the effect that alcohol produces after many squirts. I stopped. I did not abuse the liquor. As a rational adult I stopped.
If the government needs to regulate all possible irrational acts than obesity should become illegal because overeating is an irrational bad act. Wait! I forgot! They are trying to do that at fast food chains!
The government is going too far in trying to regulate our eating and drinking habits. It should do what it was empowered to do by The United States Constitution: establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and secure the blessings of liberty. I don’t think the words in the preamble to promote general welfare had anything to do with food and drink.
Kathy,
ReplyDeleteNO!!! The malt liquor industry should be allowed to find new ways to market to kids. These products are not manufactured or marketed to rational adults. The market they are going after are 16 - 22yrs old.
The product is designed to get kids drunk and then increase the buzz with a large jolt of caffeine. Kids are dying after drinking moderate amounts of it. Having heart attacks and dying. You don't care? The majority of us do. The products are poison. Just as Arsenic is poison. Would you allow Arsenic to be sold as a sleeping pill? I bet it would be a very effective pill.
This blog is indefensible.
PT-2
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a junior in high school (many years ago!), I had a wonderful friend who, after showing signs of depression, began taking the anti-depressant Zoloft. Soon after that, he hung himself in his basement on his 18th birthday. Truly an unbelievably horrific tragedy, both for his friends & family as well as for the future he could have seen. After a great deal of looking into the matter, it was determined that the Zoloft had significantly increased his suicidal ideations. Do we ban Zoloft for that? No, I don't think so. I have very mixed feelings on some of the more powerful anti-depressants, but considering they have that effect on only a very small percentage of their users, I feel it's a fair conclusion that those suicidal ideations stem from the individuals rather than being created by the drug itself.
There's an element of risk in nearly everything we do. Should/when some of us fall prey to the consequences of those risks, it too often is easy to blame the activities themselves ("activities" being anything from BASE jumping to drinking too much liquor to petting a neighbor's kitten), & often too difficult to blame the risk-takers. This isn't to suggest I "blame" my friend for taking Zoloft, but nor do I necessarily "blame" the drug either. It simply was a terribly unfortunate situation. How many teenagers, college students, & others in this country have died as a result of binge drinking? Do we blame the alcohol? Of course not, the alcohol didn't make them drink it, other factors did. It is so imperative that we remain rational when confronted with emotional issues. Difficult as hell, but imperative. If we don't, we all will end up living in a country/world governed by the whims of emotion, which holds the distinction of being more irrational than nearly anything else we know. Necessary, but completely irrational.
As for your actual post Kathy, I agree with your ultimate conclusion, but not with many of your points (though that's not to suggest they're wrong in any way!). Your assertion that "there is absolutely no reason for anyone to ever imbibe" is one I could not possible disagree with any more. Yes, alcohol absolutely is intoxicating & generally all around pointless, save for its power to inebriate, which in itself allows for a great degree of enjoyment. Hell, the primary purpose of clothing is to protect our bodies from the elements, so what's the purpose of spending exorbitant amounts of money on brand name labels? Enjoyment, nothing more.
ReplyDeleteAs for your statement that alcohol will "impair my brain and cause me to beat up people in a drunken rage or drive a car recklessly," all I can say is I've been consuming alcohol for years (& on more than one occasion in excess ... ugh) & not once have even considered beating anyone up (to say nothing of actually doing it!) or driven a car recklessly. On the contrary, I had my fill of fisticuffs in elementary school & was taught to drive by my mother, the all around queen of long-distance driving. I'm an awfully good driver, with no speeding/parking tickets, traffic incursions, or accidents on my record. Considering the staggering amount of alcohol I've consumed during my post-21 years (I was a good priest's kid & never drank prior, save for a glass of wine with holiday dinners to feel more grown up), if it actually *caused* people to beat up others &/or drive recklessly, I certainly would have experienced at least one of those symptomes by now. I haven't. Which (along with extensive scientific research) leads me to believe that it's not alcohol that *causes* these drunken bar brawls, but rather individuals experiencing a sudden decrease in personal inhibitions. A person with violent tendencies most likely will act violent when drunk, while a person with depressive tendencies will act depressed when drunk.