A Sadly Misplaced Boycott

Ever since the white man interacted with the Native Americans, one of the first things we did was give them alcohol. And smallpox contaminated blankets, but mostly alcohol.

Recently, the Oglala Sioux have sued AB-InBev, and other brewers and distributors because the small town of Whiteclay, Nebraska (Pop. 10, and sells more than four million cans of beer and malt liquor annually) is the closest place to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to buy alcohol. Out of 45,000 people, there have been 20,000 alcohol related arrests. Note: The story does not give a time frame for this statistic. It could be in a month, or in ten years. Whiteclay is not on the reservation, where alcohol is illegal, so it is out of the Indian Police jurisdiction. There Sheridan County Sherriff's office only has nine officers, and cannot adequately patrol the town.

On May 5, Nicholas D. Kristof wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times urging a Boycott of AB-InBev. His reasoning: "While some Miller, Coors and Pabst beer is sold in the stores, the great majority is Anheuser-Busch products, including Hurricane malt liquor and Budweiser beer."

Sigh.

Even if the citizens of Sheridan county razed the town to the ground, the Indians would drive the nineteen miles to the next town and buy their beer there. (Mr. Kristof even admits that there is something to that. So boycotting AB-InBev would really do nothing. Trust me. I've been boycotting AB-InBev for years and they are still in business! (I don't know if I'm really boycotting or just staying away from flavorless beer, but my point's the same.)) Obviously, then, he would boycott AB-InBev until they got out of the next nearest town, the next nearest town, the next nearest town, and the next. . .  Well, you catch my drift. Eventually that can only lead to Prohibition. And we all know how that turned out.

Another flaw in the boycott is that even if Mr. Kristof's and my boycott works, and AB-InBev pulls out of Whiteclay, then MillerCoors becomes the biggest seller of beer. So we boycott them (because now they're more evil). When they pull out of the market, we'll boycott Sam Adams, say. I have worked fifteen Oktoberfests here in Paradise, and when we run out of Sam Adams Oktoberfest, the customers switch to Saint Arnold Oktoberfest, and when we run out that, they switch to Real Ale Oktoberfest. And when we run out of that, they switch to Bud Light.

This is a pointless, and ultimately doomed, boycott.

First Smoking, Then Alcohol

I've long been a critic of smoking bans, warning that once the neo-Prohibitionists stamp out cigarettes, they will turn their attention to alcohol. In the UK, a recent study found that Social Smoking has been rising. Most respondents said they only smoke while drinking with other people. Typical anti-smoking piece, really, until I stumbled across an interesting sentence.

Stuck in the middle of the article this innocuous sentence: "Drinking therefore enabled them to 'binge smoke,' while also distancing them from this behaviour, so helping to maintain their 'non-smoker' persona."

The neo-Prohibitionists will likely seize on this.  "Alcohol causes people to smoke. When they smoke they get cancer and die. Logically, therefore alcohol causes you to get cancer and die."

When they start saying this, remember, I told you so.

Children Seeing Beer

In a fairly mundane article about whether or not it was a Virginia state law to put six packs of beer in a plastic bag (It's not. It's store policy.), I came across a brain numbing sentence. Raj Gupta, a Seven-Eleven franchise owner has a policy that all beer be bagged for several reasons, including "that it prevents minors from seeing people carrying alcohol".

Dude, if you're that concerned, stop selling alcohol!

Underage use of Alcohol down

All those anti-alcohol and "Truth" ads seem to be doing the trick. A Federal survey has found that fewer teens are using alcohol or cigarettes. They have moved on to marijuana.

I'm sure "Truth" will find a way to blame cigarette and beer companies.

Of course, my source seems to be a prohibitionist site. Here's the last sentence of the next to last paragraph: "Alcohol and marijuana are regarded as 'gateway substances' that pave the way for more dangerous abuse."

Beer-Bottle Baby Billboard

This picture appeared on a billboard in Deep River, CN. Disguised as an attempt to get parents to stop their children from drinking, the real reason behind the billboard is revealed in the article: "'Letting kids drink young is not a good idea at all. But telling your children not to drink, while you're drinking isn't ever going to work. What we need is leadership by example,' said [Wayne] Martin." In other words, parents should stop drinking.

The neo-Prohibitionists are on the move, folks.