Alcohol and Society - Immoderate-Drinking Cultures

Written by Stanton Peele

Immoderate-Drinking 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.

Peele, S., and Brodsky, A., "The Antidote to Alcohol Abuse: Sensible Drinking Messages," pp. 66-70 in Waterhouse, A.L., and Rantz, J.M., eds., Wine in Context: Nutrition, Physiology, Policy (Proceedings of the Symposium on Wine & Health 1996), American Society for Enology and Viticulture, Davis, CA, 1996, p. 67.

IX Government control policies are misguided and ineffective in regulating cultural drinking practices.

In most cases, strict government controls represent inadequate efforts to remedy weak or harmful cultural rules for drinking.

"Official or formal controls are far less effective in shaping behavior than are the unofficial informal controls that people exert in their daily interactions, through gossip, exhortations, or other forms of social sanction.... Addressing attitudes and values is probably the most effective way, in the long run, to change patterns of belief and behavior, because even the strictest nation-state is hard put to enforce its laws and regulations when they conflict with the culture of the people."

Heath, D.B., International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1995, pp. 343, 358-359.

"The evidence is...that control-of-supply policies will never reduce substance abuse significantly and that such policies may backfire by propagating images of substances as being inherently overpowering."

Peele, S., "The Limitations of Control-of-Supply Models for Explaining and Preventing Alcoholism and Drug Addiction," Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1987, Vol. 48, 61-77 (quote p. 61).

"[Among states in the U.S.], the more proscriptive the norms concerning alcohol consumption [and the lower the overall rate of consumption], the greater the incidence of behavior that is defined as socially disruptive.... The results of the present study suggest...that societies that fear alcohol soon encounter problems with disruptive alcoholics."

Linsky, A.S., et al., "Stress, Drinking Culture, and Alcohol Problems," pp. 554-575 in Pittman, D.J., and White, H.R., eds., Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, New Brunswick, NJ, 1991, pp. 567, 570.

"In general, those societies and groups that place a high value on sobriety and a low value on intoxication do not have a need for extensive social control.... Societies that place a high premium upon the pleasures of drink and that have the greatest need for control are inclined to reject programs of control or to sabotage them if they are established.... Large societies with mixtures of ethnic minorities, diverse locality, and occupational groups make it unlikely that any one model will suffice to eliminate socially harmful drinking."

Lemert, E.M., "Alcohol, Values, and Social Control," pp. 681-701 in Pittman, D.J., and White, H.R., eds., Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, New Brunswick, NJ, 1991, p. 697.

"The control model of prevention...has been increasingly espoused by policymakers and others throughout the world, calling for increasing restrictions on the availability of alcohol as the best way to lessen alcoholism or a wide range of alcohol-related problems. In light of this case study (among others), the sociocultural model of prevention appears more plausible, stressing that the meanings, values, norms, and expectations associated with drinking have more effect than sheer quantity does in determining how many and what kinds of problems may be associated with alcohol -- or whether, as is strikingly the case among the Bolivian Camba, such problems appear not to occur at all."

Heath, D.B., "Continuity and Change in Drinking Patterns of the Bolivian Camba," pp. 78-86 in Pittman, D.J., and White, H.R., eds., Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns Reexamined, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, New Brunswick, NJ, 1991, p. 85.