The recent series of anti-alcohol articles in the national newspaper SVD provide two insightful messages about Sweden:
1. News in the recently relaunched SVD has been relegated to pages 30 and beyond while special interest articles and analysis pieces occupy the first sections of the paper. Is this the future of newspapers: We get our news online in real time and the next morning we sip our coffee reading the news explained to us by the learned scribes?
2. The cow boy and indian model is too easily used to explain complex subjects: cow boys – white hats = good. Indians – dark = bad, bank robber cow boys – black hats = bad too.
Alcohol when abused can be extremely harmful and almost every Swedish family has a story of a relative doomed by alcohol abuse. The depressing, scary series of articles in SVD have made a strong case for prohibition and educating our children to avoid alcohol or face an uncertain future of substance addiction.
Demonisation of legally available products has never in our western history proven to be a successful public education program. I read in The Economist recently about the incidence of teenage pregnancy in the USA. It it significantly higher in conservative Republican states amongst Evangelist Christian communities. The message of sex is bad, abstinence until you are married or you will be damned had the totally opposite affect. Tell a child not to touch the flame and you can guarantee they will put their hand in it!
Many things can be abused and can kill but we don’t ban them or demonise them: cars kills, motorbikes even more. At least there is no government monopoly on the sale (restriction of sale) on cars and petrol! But why?
Children are educated through example. See their parents swear off alcohol during the week but down a 3L bag in box wine on Friday night and the message to the children is conflicting, confusing and wrong. Set an example and de-mystify wine through moderate consumption (never abuse or over-consumption) and as part of a lifestyle of food and appreciation, the alcohol ceases to be the forbidden fruit consumed when the parents go out.
Why didn’t SVD follow the recent article on one man’s horrible life growing up with a weekend alcoholic mother with another on a family whose parents appreciated wine and passed it on to their children who most likely rebelled when they got older but less likely through alcohol abuse. I dare say they would argue that any positive articles on alcohol would only lead to criticism that they encourage alcohol consumption. Not that their pages are not brimming over with wine advertisements.
Moderation, appreciation, education by example and making us take responsibility for our actions. Simple lesson to be learned.
To encourage more Swedes to appreciate quality wine we are running a weekend long offer to deliver home free of charge to anyone in Sweden their wine ordered from www.australianwineclub.se so they can take the first steps away from bag-in-box over consumption to appreciation of quality wine in moderation.
Cheers
Mark
Tags: SVD
An intelligent, down-to-earth piece regarding an issue that has frustrated me ever since I moved to Sweden. The fact that the Swedish government demonises alcohol is, I am convinced, one of the reasons why there is such a problem of alcohol abuse in Sweden- particularly amongst teenagers. It’s a bit like the dieter who tries to abstain completely from doughnuts, only to find themselves at the end of a successful week, covered in powdered sugar after wolfing down 8 of them in a row. Moderation, people. Although Australia is stereotypically regarded as a nation of beer/wine guzzling hooligans, we actually have far fewer problems with this issue- we enjoy a beer at lunch or a glass of wine routinely with dinner, yes. But I rarely saw the kind of binge drinking back home that seems to be the rule rather than the exception here on a Saturday night.
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Thank you, Mark. Having grown up in the USA where sex is demonized, and now having lived in Sweden for almost 8 years where alcohol is demonized, I can tell you that I am very tired of demonization. You don’t fix problems by classifying things as evil. You fix problems by educating people in a practical, factual way about issues.
Some people regard USA stereotypically as a booze-guzzling nation, but I think the US is pretty average, and binge drinking is not as much of a thing there as it seems to be in Sweden and even the UK.
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Alcohol is, quite simply, a killer.
In fact, it is the second leading cause of preventable death in the world, just after tobacco.
Appreciate away, but don’t lose sight of the facts.
Perhaps we could discuss it further while having a cigar appreciation night… another refined killer that has now bowed to the facts.
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This has been going on for the 6 years I’ve been in this country. You hit the nail on the head with the demonization. The way I see it is tha newspapers are writing about alcohol with big headlines and photos all the time, you could be forgiven for thinking this is just blatant marketing. There is a saying any publicity is good publicity… I come from a French family where from the age of 12 or so I was given half a glass of wine with my meals and educated on the difference of grapes and regions. This meant when all my fellow English friends got to the binge drinking stage (around 16-18 years old), I had learnt to enjoy a drink for the flavour and not for the drunkedness. There problem here in Sweden is there is a lack of real quality alcohol (monopoly = no competition, so what do you expect?!). And I’m not even going to go there in respects to hembränt moonshine.
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RAP – Alcohol is as much a killer as crossing the road (both are preventable), stop all this melodrama please. And before throwing around top 10 lists of preventable deaths, do some research and state fact, putting Alcohol & Smoking 1 & 2 is just a pure lie.
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The main point I believe is that if a product is legally available but has proven negative effects for society (like alcohol and tobacco) then demonizing it does not foster a responsible attitude towards consumption. Swedish public health policy for alcohol has been based upon restriction and highlighting the harmful effects. It does not work.
Everyone should know the harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, drugs, unsafe sex, swimming in dangerous places, driving too fast or DUI, throwing things out of high windows or flushing old medicines down the toilet etc but at the same time we teach our children how to resonsibly consume alcohol, have safe consensual sexual relations, learn to swim, get a license and drive a car safely and always take responsibility for your own actions. The government can not replace the role of taking responsibilty for oneself.
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I really with agree with Karyl Severson, demonization gets old fast, as it simply does not solve any of the problems associated with whatever is being demonized. Systembolaget is running a propaganda campaign aimed at Brussels about how alcohol is not “just another commodity like rhubarb”; the campaign relies on showing a series of alcohol-related tragedies, and then says, without providing any explanation as to how, that the Swedish alcohol policy works. But the fact is, it doesn’t work. If it worked, SVD would not have the fodder of alcohol scare stories to publish all the time.
As it is, the Swedish policy punishes moderate alcohol consumers and faciliates easier binge drinking. As counter-intuitive as that sounds, it makes sense when you realize that the limited opening hours cause alcoholics to stock up on alcohol and that going to a store that only sells alcohol, where people are surrounded by others making the exact same purchases, can reinforce someone’s denial of a problem they might have with it. Basically, if you treat something neurotically, society will use it neurotically.
This moralism and demonization reminds me too much of my homeland, the USA, where a lot of things are demonized, resulting in no positive change. Swedes, like most foreigners, tend to laugh at those neuroses, but mention a Swedish neurosis like alcohol, and they act like Sarah Palin would if you tried to talk about gun-control.
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