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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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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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