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Soriek  1yr ago (text post)   1073 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 23

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. I’m increasingly doing more coverage of countries we’re likely to have a userbase living in, or just that I think our userbase would be more interested in. This does mean going a little outside of my comfort zone and I’ll probably make mistakes, so chime in where you see any. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Forgot to put it the last week's one in the last thread, but Finland:

BOOZE LIBERALISATION: Alcohol legislation tends to frequently be an important subject in Finnish politics, at least compared to many other countries. There is a history involved. Finland was one of the few Western countries to experiment with Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s, with similar results to US (i.e., a lot of booze smuggling by organized crime), and even after it ended, the Finnish state has remained worried about the citizens’ wish to booze it up and has attempted to find ways to control this activity strictly.

Thus, during the Cold War era, at least the stereotypical visit to a bar would include the whole crew buying a sandwich between them just to satisfy the requirement that “alcohol can only be served with food”, the implication often being that the sandwich would go to the trash uneaten. After 1969 it was legal to sell alcohol drinks with 4,7% or less strength in stores, but before that, one would have to go the government-owned alcohol monopoly stores, the Alko stores, to do that. Alko still is the only place that sells (all but the very weakest of) wines and strong drinks.

However, ever since the 80s, these laws have been liberalized, both to appeal to voters and in recognition to the continuing liberalization of trade regimes generally and the increased possibilities of the citizens to just buy booze abroad (first by visiting, now also by mail). The new government has, thus, issued a fresh set of proposals, include not only increasing the top limit of alcohol strength for store selling (increased previously to 5,5 %, will be increased to 8,0 %), but also allowing the domestic online sales of alcohol. Probably the most controversial aspect is that it would be possible to order alcohol straight to one’s house through Wolt or Foodora or some other similar delivery service, panned for the potential that low-paid delivery workers would obviously not check the age or the general condition of the persons they’re selling to.

I had literally no idea Finland had a prohibition era, or that it lasted so long into recent history, that’s fascinating. Is the stereotype of Finland as a hard drinking country a recent one, or just totally off base?

Should be noted that the "actual" prohibition ended in 1931, but yeah, tight alcohol policies have continued for a long time.

Finnish alcohol consumption is actually lower than in many European countries per capita, but that's also because the stereotypical Finnish drinking pattern is "sober on weekdays, blasted on weekends", instead of tippling throughout the week (ie. nightcaps, wine or beer on working lunch, having a beer while watching TV after work). (This is the general Nordic drinking pattern, as illustrated by this Polandball cartoon.)

The idea that alcohol liberalization would help Finland achieve an "European drinking culture" (ie. replacing wasted on weekends with tippling during the week) has been repeated by liberalization advocates so often it's basically a meme at this point.

I don't know the answer, but I'm trying to understand the logic of the question. You don't think they experimented with prohibition precisely because it was a problem back then?

There are a lot of rules against building houses, and I don't consider building houses ever being a problem exactly. Wouldn't surprise me if Prohibition was similar, just one group pushing their strategically optimal set of values, damn the societal consequences.

Possible, but it felt weird to me that the option "there was an actual problem with alcoholism" was not on the table.

Yeah certainly a fair point, I guess I was imagining more like present-day dry towns and counties in the US which chose those laws as a reflection of their values rather than prohibition era US choosing those laws as a solution to an issue.

Iirc prohibition had some ‘alcohol is a sin’ support but a bigger part of it was feminists who blamed alcohol for domestic violence and ‘good governance’ types who saw alcoholism as a social vice.

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