Law of Unintended Consequences

One area where Norway is definitely not as liberal or permissive as the US is in alcohol sales. Like the US, Norway still operates in the shadow of prohibition. Alcohol was prohibited here from 1919 - 1927. I believe that the US and Norway were the only two non-Muslim nations to attempt such folly. OK, to fully disclose what truly happened, while it was termed prohibition, it really only prohibited beverages that exceeded 12% alcohol. At least wine and beer were still available. Due to the high taxes, bootlegging and smuggling liquor from Sweden still occur here.

Today there are very few bars or taverns in Stavanger- places that serve liquor. Beer can be purchased in grocery stores, but everything else is only available at the state-owned Vinmonopoli. All forms of alcohol are heavily taxed. Alcohol cannot be purchased on Sunday- or after 8pm. I realize it isn't that radical compared to how things operate in Minneapolis, or suburbs like Edina or Richfield with their municipal liquor stores.

What is radically different is that the legal BAC level for driving is .02. This is four times lower than the limit in most of the US- and five times lower than what the level recently was in Minnesota. People are worried about driving to work in the morning if they had a few drinks the previous night. People are worried about liqueurs in chocolates. I have never seen anyone drive after even one beer.

It appears that the unintended effect of this law is that it promotes heavy drinking. Norway has a higher level of alcoholism relative to much of Europe. I'm no expert on alcohol studies, but anecdotally, it seems that people do not want to waste a taxi ride home from a restaurant to drink one glass of wine with a meal. People do not drink two beers in moderation with friends after work, then drive home. If they are going to have a drink, they might as well go all the way. It becomes a major production. Mixed drinks can cost as much as $15US, so young adults often pre-intoxicate themselves before going out to the bars so they can spend as little money as possible.

If you want to add some science to my armchair quarterbacking, technically, like the US, Norway is considered a temperance nation. Statistically, per Stanton Peele, temperance nations (Norway, Sweden, U.S., U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Finland, Iceland) tend to have lower overall rates of alcohol consumption, but higher rates of distilled spirits consumption than non-temperance nations (Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands).

1. Temperance countries drink less per capita than non-temperance countries. It is not a high overall level of consumption that creates anti-alcohol movements.
2. Temperance countries drink more distilled spirits; nontemperance countries drink more wine. Wine lends itself to mild, regular consumption with meals, whereas "hard liquor" is often consumed more intensively, drunk on weekends and in bars.
3. Temperance countries have six to seven times as many Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) groups per capita as nontemperance countries. Temperance countries, despite having much lower overall alcohol consumption, have more people who feel they have lost control of their drinking. There are often phenomenal differences in A.A. membership which are exactly opposed to the amount of drinking in a country: the highest ratio of A.A. groups in 1991 was in Iceland (784 groups/million people), which has among the lowest levels of alcohol consumption in Europe, while the lowest A.A. group ratio in 1991 was in Portugal (.6 groups/million people), which has among the highest levels of consumption.
4. Temperance countries have a higher death rate from atherosclerotic heart disease among men in a high-risk age group. Cross-cultural comparisons of health outcomes must be interpreted with caution because of the many variables, environmental and genetic, that may influence any health measure. Nonetheless, the lower death rate from heart disease in nontemperance countries seems to be related to the "Mediterranean" diet and lifestyle, including wine consumed regularly and moderately.

Further, regarding drinking customs and values:

Moderate-Drinking (Nontemperance) Cultures

1. Alcohol consumption is accepted and is governed by social custom, so that people learn constructive norms for drinking behavior.
2. The existence of good and bad styles of drinking, and the differences between them, are explicitly taught.
3. Alcohol is not seen as obviating personal control; skills for consuming alcohol responsibly are taught, and drunken misbehavior is disapproved and sanctioned.

Immoderate-Drinking (Temperance) Cultures

1. Drinking is not governed by agreed-upon social standards, so that drinkers are on their own or must rely on the peer group for norms.
2. Drinking is disapproved and abstinence encouraged, leaving those who do drink without a model of social drinking to imitate; they thus have a proclivity to drink excessively.
3. Alcohol is seen as overpowering the individual's capacity for self-management, so that drinking is in itself an excuse for excess.

I find this particularly interesting since I have seen immoderate binge drinking first hand- and not just by young adults. On the other hand, the attitudes about drinking and driving are much better than in the US. I miss Paris, where bottled wine is cheaper than bottled water. Here, I need to really think about even drinking one beer.