I’m getting sick and tired of taking the flack for the All-American standard drunk and those who blame it all on beer. I could just scream. I’m tired of the MADD mothers, I’m tired of that outfit in Washington, DC, who wants to raise the taxes on all beer, and not just the yellow industrial stuff from the BudCoorsMiller mob. I’ve had it up to here with the neo-prohibitionists. Good grief! Some of my friends even preach it to me!
The first miracle of Christ, at the behest of his mother, was to get booze for a wedding.
I drink sanely. Most of my drinking friends drink sanely. A very small percentage of our compatriots who use alcohol actually do abuse it. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism claims that 12 to 18 million of the estimated 128 million drinkers abuse alcohol. They do not substantiate their figures, but even if they were accurate that’s still only 9 to 14 percent of the drinking population, and a tiny 5 to 7 percent of the total population. Incidentally, according to an international survey, the U.S. ranks 18th among the developing countries in alcohol consumption. And what do these people call abuse? If you have a beer with your lunch and another before bedtime, you are an abuser of a dangerous substance. Shame on you!
But is alcohol really a dangerous substance and is two beers a day actually abuse? Obviously, in terms of human history and tradition, two beers a day is nowhere near the abuse level, but there can be little doubt that alcohol is subject to misuse. It is equally obvious that there are those who shouldn’t touch the stuff … ever.
It seems to me that it is the overzealous fundamentalists who wish, once again, to inflict prohibition on those of us who enjoy the gift of alcohol. Most of them are being led, driven and financed by ex-alcoholics, who blame alcohol and not themselves for their problems. These would-be Ayatollahs are only doing what they have always done: that is, they want power over the rest of us. The main item on these groups’ hidden agenda is prohibition. You’d have thought they’d have learned from that wretched experiment.
Let us not forget to remind these power-mad “reverends” that there are no less than 271 references to wine and spirits in the Christian scriptures, all of them positive (I think). The first miracle of Christ, at the behest of his mother, was to get booze for a wedding. These folks are at least as obsessed with alcohol as those who really do abuse the stuff. And what was that arch-conservative Paul’s advice to Timothy? “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.”
The Medical Benefits
There is no end of hard medical evidence shouting that moderate alcohol consumption is very beneficial. Beer and wine are noted for their therapeutic properties. They have proven beneficial to gastric activity and both (but especially beer) have complex phenols that aid in reducing blood cholesterol levels by production of higher concentrations of protective, high-density lipoproteins (HDL) in the blood.
An old (1985) Johns Hopkins study found that moderate beer consumption leads to a longer life, reduced risk of heart attack and reduced stress. Indeed, the study found 13 percent lower rates of illness. They went so far as to declare that a beer a day keeps the doctor away 25 percent more of the time, compared with non-drinkers and spirit drinkers. They also noted that moderate drinking does not have any chronic ill effects. Another study found that those who drank 5 to 9 bottles a week were sick 28 percent less often.
