Alcohol and Public Policy Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition (1981) / Chapter Skim
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The Paradox of Alcohol Policy: The Case of the 1969 Alcohol Act in Finland
The Paradox of Alcohol Policy: The Case of the 1969 Alcohol Act in Finland
Pages 225-254
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From page 225... ...
The author is grateful to Kettil Bruun of the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies, and to members of the Social Research Institute of Alcohol Studies in Helsinki, whose invaluable assistance made this study possible.
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From page 226... ...
constitute an important body of alcohol policy knowledge regarding alcohol availability and its control by governmental measures. The Finnish literature regarding the 1969 Alcohol Act is an invaluable stock of knowledge regarding the effectiveness of a small number of conventional policy instruments commonly found in advanced industrialized countries such measures as tax policy, availability restrictions, and age limits.
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From page 227... ...
ALKO's size and prominence in Finland seem to intensify real contradictions among the three statutory purposes of ALKO: to manufacture and sell alcoholic beverages, to raise revenues and to hold down consumption. An important new factor for ALKO has also entered into alcohol policy within the last decade.
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From page 228... ...
The anticipation of this policy debate was a key factor in the establishment by ALKO of the Finnish Foundation of Alcohol Studies in 1950 as well as in ALKO's support for Kuusi's study of rural prohibition. It was during this period that ALKO independently liberalized wine sales by no longer requiring identity cards for purchasing lighter wines (Kuusi 1957~.
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From page 229... ...
The Finnish drinking style is seen as the inclination to engage in drinking bouts for the explicit purpose of serious intoxication, interspersed with rather long periods of relatively little or no use of alcohol. Survey researchers in Finland have been mainly interested in how much an individual drinks on a particular occasion with relatively little interest in constructing detailed topologies of drinkers.
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From page 230... ...
But Kuusi warns of the need to remove excessive restrictions in the social sphere, to reevaluate the necessity of burdensome traditional and moralistic restraints that may be counterproductive. Kuusi is clearly taking the cultural modernist view, referring to these restraints as categorical restrictions.2 Regarding the controversy over making alcohol available in rural areas and making certain forms of beer more available in retail shops, he lists six different hypotheses set forward regarding the results of such change: (~)
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From page 231... ...
It is clear that sentiment strongly favoring a less restrictive alcohol policy grew during the 1960s among the leaders of ALKO, among the experts at the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies, and among the general public. In the opinion of these experts, the key was the sharp social and demographic changes occurring in postwar Finland, accelerating during the early 1960s and culminating in the election of 1966.
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From page 232... ...
, the state alcohol monopoly's policy toward the licensing of restaurants was changed so as to permit alcohol (especially beer) to be sold in more restaurants, and the legal drinking age was reduced from 21 to 20 years for distilled beverages, 18 for light beer, and medium beer was allowed to be sold in retail shops.
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From page 233... ...
The sustained increase in strong alcoholic beverage use in the intervening years is given an interesting interpretation by the Finnish researchers, as we shall see below. The changes in availability of medium beer with the new law were radical and sudden.
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From page 234... ...
Their research reveals that Finland's growth in per-capita consumption paralleled Sweden until the Finnish liberalization in 1969; after this change the Finnish level rose to a point higher than that of Sweden during the early 1970s (see Table 3~. MORE RECENT SURVEY REPORTS Jussi Simpura of the Social Research Institute of Alcohol Studies provides us with a very complete picture of changes that occurred in 1969
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From page 235... ...
Simpura (1978) speculates that there actually was an increase in drinking instances in 1976, but this was not revealed in the survey because medium beer had in the intervening period become defined as a nonalcoholic drink (much like the light beer that was available in Finland in retail shops prior to the change)
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From page 236... ...
Finally, as Table 4 indicates, there has been a strong and sustained increase in average weekly alcohol consumption during this period, from 5.96 to 10.32 centiliters of alcohol per week for men, and from 0.88 to 2.52 centiliters for women. One of the more interesting findings of these surveys is the estimate of the number of heavy consumers, defined by Finnish researchers as persons exceeding 1,000 centiliters of alcohol in annual consumption (this is the Finns' estimate of consumption that produces increased risk of cirrhosis)
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From page 237... ...
The slight overall increase in the consumption of beer is accounted for mainly by the increased purchase of strong beers in ALKO shops and in restaurants. The speculation of researchers at the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies is that medium beer sold in retail shops and available in many new restaurants was no longer seen as a true alcoholic beverage.
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From page 238... ...
and 95 (19684. A similar stability in real price for all alcoholic beverages occurred in Sweden' but there were important changes in the relative prices of the different types of beverages in both countries in general, the relative price of spirits increased.
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From page 239... ...
37~. M~akela and Osterberg argue that both the rise in overall consumer spending and the 1969 Alcohol Act combined to accentuate the increase in alcohol's share of consumer expenditure in Finland.
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From page 240... ...
Also the expansion of restaurants and ALKO shops -- - a process that began before the 1969 act along with the strong increase in consumer expenditures per capita helped to accentuate the changes in Finland. EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF THE 1969 ALCOHOL ACT Finnish researchers at the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies (and other key figures such as ALKO officials)
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From page 241... ...
has suggested, the modern temperance movement in the United States was shaped in many ways by the upheavals caused first by industrialization and finally by the maturing of the American economy and the associated emergence of the modern consumer ethic to challenge the traditional work ethic. This is the difference between what Gusfield calls "cultural fundamentalists" and "cultural modernists." Gusfield's categories are helpful in framing the alcohol policy debate in Finland, sharply illuminating the research and findings of the Finnish Foundation and other groups active in alcohol policy.
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From page 242... ...
Disposable income also increased very rapidly during the TABLE 8 Distribution of the Work Force for Selected European Countries, 1950, 1960, and 1970 Agriculture Manufacturing Services 50 60 70 50 60 70 50 60 70 Finland 46 35 20 27 31 34 27 34 46 Sweden 21 14 8 41 46 40 38 40 52 Great Britain 5 4 3 48 49 46 47 47 51 Hungary 54 38 25 22 34 45 24 28 30 Source: These data were furnished by the Research Group of Comparative Sociology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
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From page 243... ...
Sulkunen argues that this decline began earlier than the 1969 Alcohol Act, yet one is struck by the sharp decline in female abstinence after 1969. Table 10 demonstrates that the change in drinking habits has been most noticeable among white-collar groups and increased greatly during this period.
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From page 244... ...
after World War II present a sharp rate of change in contrast with the generations that preceded in terms both of abstinence rates and age of initial alcohol use. An extended quotation by Sulkunen (1979a, pp.
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From page 245... ...
Sulkunen regards these differences in drinking styles as truly generational rather than age differences. Sulkunen's assessment of the meaning of declining abstinence rates and a sharp increase in the numbers who use alcohol at an early age can be summarized as follows: Any evaluation of the 1969 Alcohol Act and its consequences must take into account a post-World War II sea change in the general cultural and political climate regarding alcohol.
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From page 246... ...
We must remember that this period was one during which many factors contributed to a more liberal climate, and that many key figures in the alcohol policy debate favored these changes. There is room for disagreement as to what weight to assign to cultural changes in drinking habits, the rise in consumer expenditure for alcohol, and the increased availability brought by the 1969 act, in evaluating the subsequent rise in consumption and associated problems.
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From page 247... ...
Thus the earlier optimism of the Finnish Alcohol Legislation Committee, which in 1951 recommended making lighter beverages more available to stimulate the substitutions of beer and wine for spirits, seems to have been the central casualty of the aftermath of the 1969 act. Further, there is endorsement by all of the principals that per-capita consumption must itself be a central feature of Finnish alcohol policy.
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From page 248... ...
1-3~. The cultural fundamentalists resisted these moves, sometimes in terms of the traditional values of abstinence, at other times in terms of the researchers who wrote darkly of the Finnish hereditary type types who were given over to compulsive, explosive drinking that all too often resulted in violent outbursts.
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From page 249... ...
It would be a serious mistake to see the shift in Finland regarding alcohol policy as a return to earlier traditional positions. Those who supported the liberalization measures have on balance prevailed.
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From page 250... ...
There is now a growing emphasis on health and safety issues, which apparently is enlarging the previous preoccupation with the Finnish drinking style. The attempt to find a better marriage between alcohol and larger economic policy, especially income policy, is also a new central part of the alcohol policy debate.
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From page 251... ...
In the United States, policy measures to restrict the availability of alcohol or to influence per-capita consumption are seen by some as a retreat from the values of cultural modernism and a return to rural, traditional viewpoints viewpoints currently characterized as "neoprohibitionism." This characterization might well have applied if these issues had been raised in the period following repeal. Then a call by the "drys" for a return to, if not prohibition, at least a much more restrictive control system for alcohol could fairly be interpreted as a victory for cultural fundamentalism and the "drys." But almost a generation has passed since repeal, and the post-World War II generation in the United States grew to maturity protesting United States involvement in Vietnam, advocating civil rights, and urging less restrictive measures for drugs such as marijuana.
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From page 252... ...
At the same time there is heightened appreciation of the health benefits of the traditional Finnish style of drinking and a deepened respect for the inability of available and acceptable social policy measures to influence this radically. To Americans this suggests that there is significant value in retaining our own present structure of alcohol consumption.
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From page 253... ...
Helsinki: Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies. Castles, F
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From page 254... ...
1950-1975. January, 1979 mimeo for the International Study of Alcohol Control Experience, Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies.
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