Then there are more disturbing instances, examples of a frighteningly fascistic enforcement of sobriety. In a white paper titled "Back Door Prohibition: The New War on Social Drinking," Radley Balko, from the libertarian Cato Institute, recounts a case that should chill the marrow of any American who believes in an adult's right to behave like an adult:
In December 2002 police in Fairfax County, Virginia initiated a series of 'stings' in bars and taverns… Eighteen tavern patrons were singled out, while still inside the tavern, and ordered to submit to alcohol breath tests. Half of them were then arrested for 'public intoxication.' None of the patrons had made an attempt to get behind the wheel of a car. None had been a nuisance for bartenders or caused any type of disturbance… Police Chief J. Thomas Manger told the Washington Post, "Public intoxication is against the law. You can't be drunk in a bar." When asked where someone could be drunk, he replied: "At home. Or at someone else's home, and stay there till you're not drunk." (Emphasis in original.)
The crackdown on alcohol is most keenly felt on college campuses. No one disputes that student binge drinking poses serious problems. But in seeking to quash undergrads' overindulgence, many rules and regulations miss the point - and shift the problem. Take keg-registration laws. They make it easy to track purchases, and to hold customers liable for underage drinking. They also succeed in making 30-packs, party balls, and vats of punch wildly popular.
As someone who spent four of the best years of his life in a fraternity, I'm also puzzled by the increasingly draconian diktats Greeks are expected to abide by. An article by Benoit Denizet-Lewis in the New York Times Magazine this past January reported that "eleven national and international fraternities … now require most of their chapter houses to be alcohol free, no matter what their university's policy is."
College kids drink. It's what they do. But instead of facing up to this reality, an increasing number of schools are making their rules more stringent. As a predictable result, more and more students do their keg stands off-campus. Citing a statistic that's meant to exculpate Greeks, Denizet-Lewis simultaneously brings another telling number to light. "Some fraternity leaders point out that drinking-related deaths at fraternity houses make up fewer than a dozen of the 1,400 alcohol-related deaths at colleges each year (car accidents are involved in approximately 1,100 of those)." Why might car accidents account for 79 percent of alcohol-related fatalities? Could it have something to do with misguided prohibitions that, in moving alcohol consumption off campus, only increase the number of people who are getting behind the wheel?
Drinking has drawbacks, no doubt. But people will keep doing it. Wouldn't it be sensible, rather than drawing up more rules, to follow the lead of European countries, where alcohol is a healthy and intrinsic part of day-to-day life, where teens drink wine at the dinner table, and aren't encouraged to see alcohol as an illicit thrill? In the meantime, the news just keeps getting worse. Even Jack Daniel's is caving. It was reported this fall that the Lynchburg, Tennessee, distillery's Old. No. 7 Black Label "now registers 80 proof, instead of 86." Et tu, Jack?
See, now's the time of the meal when you start getting the McStomachache … You get the McGurgles in there … Right now I've got some McGas that's rockin' … My arms got the McTwitches going in here from all the sugar that's going in my body right now. I'm feeling a little McCrazy.
-Morgan Spurlock, Super Size Me
I LOVE McDonald's. But I eat there once a month, at most. Why? Because I end up feeling sick every time I do. Still, that crap tastes so effing good. And is it not my right as an American to gorge myself on trans fat and wash it all down with a 72-ounce bucket of hyper-caloric sugar water? Perhaps not for long.The backlash began a few years ago, when McDonald's was compelled, after much hectoring, to post nutrition information near its ordering counters. The news wasn't good. But here's a question: so what? Does anyone pass beneath those golden arches expecting a healthy square meal? No. They know what they're getting: something cheap, quick, and tasty that, if eaten regularly, will kill them. That's what Morgan Spurlock proved when he packed on the pounds and his liver turned to pâté. Fast food is not meant to be eaten every day. Do people do so anyway? Stupid people, yes. But that's their choice. Nonetheless, last month the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit revived part of a class-action lawsuit that had been dismissed in 2003; the suit seeks to hold McDonald's responsible for its customers' obesity, and charges the fast-food giant with false advertising.