Monday, September 03, 2007

Let them smoke dope

Peter Preston finds a tough solution to the latest panic about under-age drinking - in Utah.

A true Salt Lake strategy would go much further.

It would make the age limit 21, rigorously enforced. It would take drink off the shelf at Tesco and Sainsbury's, reserving booze for many fewer state-registered off-licences, open 10am to 6pm weekdays (as in Sweden) and sanctioned by a national register, rigorously inspected. It would raise the prospect of tying the right to drive to a family-imposed necessity for sobriety. (Why allow 15-year-olds found drunk in the street even to learn to drive a few years later unless they've cleaned up their act?) It would be pressure, pressure, pressure to reach the tough core of a tough drinking problem.

Yikes. Authoritarian or what? Us over-age drinkers wouldn't be having much fun, only able to buy drink when we are at work. There is one flaw in this. There are other mind-altering substances to take the place of booze that are easily available any time.

As for me - I need a drink.

2 comments:

Dr Hiding Pup said...

Funny how there's such harsh drinking laws in Utah, how pornography's outlawed there, too, and then how the local law enforcement agencies turn a blind eye to polygamy, incest and child abuse.

Anonymous said...

The Volstead Act showed how well this sort of throwback to Founding Fathers theocracy [Salem anyone?] worked in practice. Enter Messr Capone, Diamond etc with suspicious-looking violin cases under their arms, bathtub gin that spelled Moorfields Eye Hospital next stop and worse.