One Tope Over the Line?
Jan. 25th, 2023 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterI think I probably had my first taste of alcohol at home when I was around ten, and we were celebrating my sister's 21st birthday with champagne. I thought it was OK but really nothing special.
In those days, the legal age for drinking (at least in a public place) or buying alcohol in Ontario was 21. But even adults over 21 had to go through a bit of a rigamarole to buy booze: filling in a little slip of paper, handing it to the clerk at the liquor store and waiting for it to be brought out and packaged in a plain brown wrapper.
Some time in the early 1970s, the drinking age was lowered to 18 (later to be upped to 19) so during my undergrad years at university, I was mostly able to imbibe quite legally, without crossing a bridge to Hull where the legal age had been 18 for yonks and every dépanneur advertised "biere froide" and never bothered with carding anyone. Meanwhile in Ontario, although the age of majority had been lowered, most of the beer and liquor stores still required the bureaucratic form-filling procedures. The first self-serve LCBO, where you plucked what you wanted from open shelves and brought it to the checkout counter, was considered quite radical!
Some time during my second year at Carleton, a TGIF tradition developed of going downtown after classes on Friday and drinking cheap beer at the Tap Room in the basement of one of the hotels in the area. It was very popular and there was often a line-up to get in.
Wine was part of my university years too. While I couldn't necessarily afford the really good stuff on a student budget, I didn't always have to pay - Carleton's Department of German (and to a lesser extent their French department) held some fabulous receptions where the Liebfraumilch and Schloss Whoever flowed quite freely.
What's prompted this bout of reminiscing is these recently-issued revised guidelines for safe alcohol consumption:
https://ccsa.ca/sites/default/files/2023-01/Canada%27s%20Guidance%20on%20Alcohol%20and%20Health%20Final%20Report_l.pdf
What are we to make of these recommendations? They represent a drastic reduction over the 10 to 15 drinks a week that were once deemed acceptable.
Around our place, they probably won't have much impact. We're fond of craft beer and these days we definitely prioritize quality over quantity. We usually have a beer with dinner on weekends, which uses up our 2-drink allotment right there. On special occasions (which don't necessarily fall at the weekend), we tend to drink wine. I don't anticipate foregoing that; at worst, I'll just feel guiltier about it! What about rum in eggnog or Grand Marnier on strawberries? Liqueur chocolates? What about using beer. wine and liquor in cooking and baking? I'm assuming that the cooking process neuters the alcohol while preserving (or even enhancing) the flavour. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
But there's no doubt that if we take these new guidelines seriously, there's a cultural shift in store for us. Whither pub crawls, wine tastings, brewery and vineyard tours, whiskey museums?
I'm obviously not denying the physiological and social harms arising from excessive alcohol consumption: liver disease, impaired driving, fetal alcohol syndrome and so forth. But I'm not sure I regard this latest report as definitive. It seems to offer more questions than answers. Here's a sample of what people are saying:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/alcohol-risks-cancer-questions-1.6723092?cmp=rss
Many people have compared all this to the cultural shift we have undergone with respect to smoking (of tobacco, I mean). But I see it as more analogous to the evolution of our stance on cannabis.
There's a definite "forbidden fruit" effect at work here, I think. The puritanical and moralistic and paternalistic arguments and customs and laws that have grown up around alcohol have contributed to making it more attractive to young people than it might otherwise have been. I think the same has happened with cannabis.
Back in the 1970s, cannabis was illegal for everyone, regardless of age. Nevertheless it was quite widely available. Young people giggled through Reefer Madness as they toked up and later visited the snack bar for post-prandial munchies.
Those young people are now seniors. How many of them are visiting all these perfectly legal pot-shops that seem to be springing up like... well, weed, on every street corner and in every strip mall?
Not many, I'd guess, as they don't seem to be doing a roaring trade!
In those days, the legal age for drinking (at least in a public place) or buying alcohol in Ontario was 21. But even adults over 21 had to go through a bit of a rigamarole to buy booze: filling in a little slip of paper, handing it to the clerk at the liquor store and waiting for it to be brought out and packaged in a plain brown wrapper.
Some time in the early 1970s, the drinking age was lowered to 18 (later to be upped to 19) so during my undergrad years at university, I was mostly able to imbibe quite legally, without crossing a bridge to Hull where the legal age had been 18 for yonks and every dépanneur advertised "biere froide" and never bothered with carding anyone. Meanwhile in Ontario, although the age of majority had been lowered, most of the beer and liquor stores still required the bureaucratic form-filling procedures. The first self-serve LCBO, where you plucked what you wanted from open shelves and brought it to the checkout counter, was considered quite radical!
Some time during my second year at Carleton, a TGIF tradition developed of going downtown after classes on Friday and drinking cheap beer at the Tap Room in the basement of one of the hotels in the area. It was very popular and there was often a line-up to get in.
Wine was part of my university years too. While I couldn't necessarily afford the really good stuff on a student budget, I didn't always have to pay - Carleton's Department of German (and to a lesser extent their French department) held some fabulous receptions where the Liebfraumilch and Schloss Whoever flowed quite freely.
What's prompted this bout of reminiscing is these recently-issued revised guidelines for safe alcohol consumption:
https://ccsa.ca/sites/default/files/2023-01/Canada%27s%20Guidance%20on%20Alcohol%20and%20Health%20Final%20Report_l.pdf
What are we to make of these recommendations? They represent a drastic reduction over the 10 to 15 drinks a week that were once deemed acceptable.
Around our place, they probably won't have much impact. We're fond of craft beer and these days we definitely prioritize quality over quantity. We usually have a beer with dinner on weekends, which uses up our 2-drink allotment right there. On special occasions (which don't necessarily fall at the weekend), we tend to drink wine. I don't anticipate foregoing that; at worst, I'll just feel guiltier about it! What about rum in eggnog or Grand Marnier on strawberries? Liqueur chocolates? What about using beer. wine and liquor in cooking and baking? I'm assuming that the cooking process neuters the alcohol while preserving (or even enhancing) the flavour. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
But there's no doubt that if we take these new guidelines seriously, there's a cultural shift in store for us. Whither pub crawls, wine tastings, brewery and vineyard tours, whiskey museums?
I'm obviously not denying the physiological and social harms arising from excessive alcohol consumption: liver disease, impaired driving, fetal alcohol syndrome and so forth. But I'm not sure I regard this latest report as definitive. It seems to offer more questions than answers. Here's a sample of what people are saying:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/alcohol-risks-cancer-questions-1.6723092?cmp=rss
Many people have compared all this to the cultural shift we have undergone with respect to smoking (of tobacco, I mean). But I see it as more analogous to the evolution of our stance on cannabis.
There's a definite "forbidden fruit" effect at work here, I think. The puritanical and moralistic and paternalistic arguments and customs and laws that have grown up around alcohol have contributed to making it more attractive to young people than it might otherwise have been. I think the same has happened with cannabis.
Back in the 1970s, cannabis was illegal for everyone, regardless of age. Nevertheless it was quite widely available. Young people giggled through Reefer Madness as they toked up and later visited the snack bar for post-prandial munchies.
Those young people are now seniors. How many of them are visiting all these perfectly legal pot-shops that seem to be springing up like... well, weed, on every street corner and in every strip mall?
Not many, I'd guess, as they don't seem to be doing a roaring trade!
