Alcohol:
The Fuel that Drives America
According
to the recent popular television commercials, the What's New slogan of Dunkin’ Donuts
is: “America
runs on Dunkin’.” The slogan is an attempt to lure people into their store for
overpriced coffee and greasy egg sandwiches, feeding into the idea that Americans
are being somehow properly nourished by these sorry excuses for daily energy.
However, the real question is, “what exactly is fueling America?”
As little as anyone wants to believe it, the answer is: alcohol. For hundreds
of years, alcohol has been the substance that keeps America going and has brought us to
where we are today. Since alcohol has
played a fundamental part in the lives and decision making of so many important
Americans, it follows that this country could never have established itself
without its fine fermented drinks.
Benjamin Franklin
once said, “my Christian brother, be kind and
benevolent like God, and do not spoil his good work. He made wine to gladden
the heart of men.”[1] Historians
have characterized Franklin as the father of America
and both an architect of and an archetype for that ill-defined “American
dream.”
Franklin is
also often characterized as the prototypicalAmerican citizen for these reasons. Living in the
revolutionary era, Franklin inherited from the earlier English
settlers had a very favorable outlook on alcohol that pervaded
prerevolutionary America, who
“brought with them a well-developed taste for intoxicating beverages, and
drinking became an important part of life in the What's New World.”[3] Alcohol
was consumed regularly at social events, just as it is today. Alcohol was also
given to the workers on farms and plantations, where “most farmers provided liquor for their hired
hands, and those who failed to do so were likely to find themselves short of
workers.”[4] The majority of the business in early America
was focused on the
production of goods that were grown on farms. But so engrained was
the alcohol break that without alcohol
present for the workers, the farms may have failed.
Other famous people joined Benjamin
Franklin in
arguing that alcohol was fundamental to American society. The Puritan Reverend Increase Mather was well known for saying that while
intoxication was sinful, “Wine is from
God.”[5] In Puritan society, there was no
tolerance for any type of behavior that would be considered conducive to “entertaining
the Devil,” but the regular
consumption of alcohol in moderation was not one of them. Jeff Hill, a scholar who has done research
into American drinking habits, has noted that “even the
morally strict Puritans” did
not see fit to “outlaw
alcohol.”[6] They accepted the fact that alcohol was
present and they did not try to change the fact that people did drink. Hill
went on to say that “a
person who did not drink was usually viewed with more suspicion than someone
who did.”[7] Alcohol was being used so frequently that
people began associating themselves with others that drank.
The history of America has also
been profoundly affected by American bar and tavern culture and the many
sigificant discussions that have occurred in their midst. Some of the more famous ones are the Green Dragon Tavern
and the Tun Tavern. The Green Dragon Tavern is where Paul
Revere, Samuel Adams and other famous patriots met to discuss topics
surrounding the oppression from Britain.
To say that these men were drunks would be inaccurate. However, it would be
ignorant to say that these men did not drink at all. The meetings were held in
places that served alcohol and that may have been the spark which turned the gears
of the Revolutionary War. Because of this, the tavern was “hailed as the ‘Headquarters
of the American Revolution’” and was known as the
headquarters of the “Sons of Liberty.”[8] Without these taverns, the space in civil
society that fueled the discussions that led to the Revolutionary War may have never started,
and we could still today be under British rule.
The Tun
Tavern is another famous bar from the colonial period. Tun
Tavern is the birthplace of the United States Marine Corps. On November 10, 1775, according to the Marine
Corps Press, “the Continental Congress
commissioned Samuel Nicholas to raise two Battalions of Marines. That very day
he set up shop in Tun Tavern . . . Prospective
recruits flocked to the tavern lured by (1) cold beer and (2) the opportunity
to serve in the What's New Corps of Marines.”[9] It would be fair to say that alcohol and
the Marine Corps are extremely closely related. The Marines are identified as
the people who serve and protect this country the best, and without alcohol,
there would never have been a tavern in which to start the group of people who
have been fighting for this country for hundreds of years.
Recently, alcohol has had a stigma
of being a substance that is abused by people throughout the world. However,
during the Colonial period, “liquor was
believed to provide a boost of energy, ward off disease, and cure a variety of
ailments.”[10] For wounded soldiers of war, alcohol was
used as an anesthetic, and was therefore “generally regarded as a ‘Good Creature of God.’ It was used as a
medicine, and praised for its contribution to a sense of warmth, relaxation,
and good fellowship.” As a part of
these important social, medical, and cultural rites, “drinking was part of the social fabric of colonial
America.”10 Alcohol in colonial America was not abused as much as
it is in some places today. This may be one reason why “the prevailing attitude” about
alcohol in the colonial and revolutionary eras “was one of acceptance—people needed breaks from their
everyday life, and alcohol was readily available, so drinking was tolerated or
even encouraged.”[11]
Given
how deeply into the fabric of American economics, history, and culture alcohol
was, is is not surprising that America
could not function without the availability of alcohol. Prohibition, which took
place in America
from 1920-1933, was the ban on the sale, production, distribution, and
consumption of alcohol. Historians agree that prohibition
was counterproductive; it led to a backlash by the American people and this
led to people handling their alcohol needs personally. Presented without any option to obtain
alcohol, one of the major affects of the ban was “an immediate surge in attempts
to import alcohol illegally from abroad.” People started to make their own alcohol (known as moonshine),
particularly in the South. This is where the term "bootleggers" came
from; people used to hide bottles of homemade alcohol literally in their boots.
Organized crime was always existent during this time, but the Prohibition Acts
allowed the Mafia to become notorious. For years in the United States, as Jeff Hill has
noted, “criminal syndicates have existed only as a means of providing illicit
goods and services. Thanks to Prohibition, an extremely popular
substance—alcohol—became one of these illicit goods, providing organized
criminals with more income and power than they had ever had before.” It is safe to say that because of
Prohibition, crime increased immensely during the early half of the 20th
Century. If alcohol was never banned, perhaps organized crime would never have
gotten to where it was when it was heavily present in America. It can also be
argued that without alcohol, there would be no need for Prohibition, which
would have never popularized organized crime.
In
recent years, America’s
culture of alcohol consumption has led to increasing levels of alcohol
abuse. In many cases, our negative
perceptions of the role of alcohol in American culture have been linked to the
more modern consequences of its abuse. In
the 1970s, the number of high school students abusing alcohol skyrocketed. Teen and young adults are the most liable to fall prey
under alcohol abuse and alcoholism. Studies of the prevalence of drinking by
age group show that “the heaviest alcohol consumption occurs in young adults
(age 21-34) and peaks in the mid 20s.”
People whose judgment is easily altered because of a lack of education of
alcohol and its effects could be subject to make bad decisions, and “most
people (78% in 1974, and 69% in 1978) who had been drunk six or more times in
the previous year did experience at least one negative consequence” due
to heavy binge drinking. These bad consequences could be loss of a job,
getting kicked out of school, DUI (driving while under the influence of alcohol
or drugs), or even death. The United
States Surgeon General has reported that “30% of all deaths in the United States
are premature because of alcohol” and that the “mortality in the age group
between 15 and 24 has increased since 1960.”
In the era of the modern motor
vehicle, the consequences of this obsession with alcohol are far direr than our
ancestors could have imagined.
Automobile accidents related to alcohol “kill someone every 30 minutes
and injure someone ever two minutes.” How could someone allow a substance that could potentially
kill someone to be on the market and purchased? And though the terrible consequences of
driving under the influence may be What's New, drunkenness surely is not. With alcohol and taverns come some negative
aspects that may be associated with them: “By the late 1800's some saloons and
taverns had become closely associated with prostitution and gambling.” In addition, “men also spent their leisure
time away from home and family.”
These statistics and facts should be enough proof that alcohol has destroyed America
and without it we as a country would be better off.
Yet despite the information
given above, the fact remains that alcohol has benefited America.
To say that alcoholism is there because of alcohol sounds like an unfair
argument. In the same ideology, there would be no good without evil, no black
without white. In an (almost) non related argument to that, since cars are bad
for the environment, should we just ban all vehicles? It may not sound the same
concept to someone, but the thought process is very similar. Just because one
aspect of something is bad, does not make the entire object evil. In many good
things there are exceptions which prove to be faults – if those faults remain
unchecked that is where we would fail. There has been more information about
alcohol abuse than there has been in the past. Programs such as D.A.R.E and
Alcoholics Anonymous are extremely helpful in the cure for people who have a
problem with alcohol in their lives. There has been stricter enforcement on
laws of people driving while intoxicated and judges now make people who have
been caught driving drunk go to classes to educate them on the actual effects
of alcohol. We as a nation have identified the fact that alcoholism and deaths
having to do with alcohol are a problem so we are doing what we can to solve
them, and progress have been made. “The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA) estimates that state laws establishing 21 as the minimum
legal drinking age have saved more than 20,000 lives between 1975 and 2000 and
will continue to save 1,000 lives each year.” This is proof that we are making progress in the dark part
of alcohol consumption.
Prohibition was the worst
decision that has been made against alcohol. Studies undertaken in the 1920s
showed that “Americans drank more under Prohibition than they did previously.” Banning alcohol completely had a negative effect on the
country, and that was easily recognized. As one prominent politician noted, “the
saloon is still here, and more people are engaged in the business than in
pre-Volstead days. You did not exterminate the brewery. You made millions of
little breweries and installed them in the homes of the people.”
Alcohol has fueled America
since before its existence and it will for years to come. Tampering with the
laws of alcohol use could potentially make the problem worse than it already
is. One absurd consequence can be seen with binge drinking before What's New laws are
implemented: “Boston teenagers hurriedly finish
their beers in the 17 seconds before a What's New Massachusetts law that raises
the drinking age to 20 goes into effect.” It has to be understood that people in general are going
to drink alcohol for whatever reason that suits them most. For the people who
have problems with it, there are groups to help them, so the harmful aspect is
being dealt with. You will not see changes over night, and certainly not in the
next five years, but eventually for sure. We, as a society, need it and have
always needed it for good reasons such as starting the revolution and the birth
of the Marine Corps. Because of these reasons, alcohol should not be considered
a terrible creation to the people of this country. Indeed, “for the vast
majority of people, alcohol is indeed the relatively harmless substance.”
Despite
this fact, there has been a misguided but persistent effort by the health care
industry in the United
States to regard the consumption of all
alcohol as a disease, much in the same way that advocates of temperance in the
early twentieth century regarded it as a vice.
Unfortunately, in the United
States, “the disease concept also maintains
that there is an unfortunate minority for whom alcohol acts as the addicting
poison.” But regarding all consumption of alcohol as an
illness neglects the important cultural history of alcohol in the United States, in which it was intended to be
used for the good of mankind, and has been for America. As years passed, more
information has been discovered on the use of alcohol and its effects. In
response to that, we have taken measures to rid society of the aspect that
could be considered evil, until there is not one anymore. Our nation has been
better with alcohol in our lives. In the
immortal words of Benjamin Franklin, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants
us to be happy.”