BrewDog Launches 32% ABV Beer

BrewDog, the Scottish brewing company behind the 18.2% ABV Tokyo* and the low alcohol Nanny State have revealed their newest brew: Tactical Nuclear Penguin, weighing in at a mighty 32% alcohol!
Managing director James Watt said a limited supply of Tactical Nuclear Penguin would be sold for £30 each.
He said: “This beer is about pushing the [...]

Scenes from a Moral Panic

From Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine (1997), The Crack Attack: Politics and Media in the Crack Scare.

On September 5, 1989, President Bush, speaking from the presidential desk in the Oval Office, announced his plan for achieving “victory over drugs” in his first major prime-time address to the nation, broadcast on all three national [...]

Having it Both Ways

From p. 396 of Andrew Sinclair, Prohibition: The Era of Excess:
Yet the strangest situation of all had been rendered legal by a decision of the Supreme Court. The Court had ruled that the Bureau of Internal Revenue had the right to request income-tax returns from bootleggers. The Court saw no reason “why the fact that a business is unlawful [...]

The Best Sentence I Read Today

When Wheeler publicly praised the insertion of poison into industrial alcohol on the theory that those who drank it were committing deliberate suicide, he did not persuade others of the humanitarian aims of the League.
Andrew Sinclair, Prohibition: The Era of Excess, p. 336. Poison is still added to some industrial alcohol, of course.

Prohibition Cartoon of the Day

 
By Winsor McCay, courtesy of DrugSenseBot. For a few of the victims of contemporary prohibition, see here.

Smoking is Gay

This video from The Onion is funny, but not too far from the reality of current campaigns (Hat tip: Balko).

Many PSAs aim to stigmatize smokers rather than inform people of health risks of smoking. I’ve always hated New Zealand’s Not Our Future campaign for this reason. They’ve just started running some [...]

Brewery Launches Low-Alcohol Beer, Calls it Nanny State

Awesome:

A brewery has launched a low alcohol beer called Nanny State after being branded irresponsible for creating the UK’s “strongest beer”.
Scottish brewer BrewDog, of Fraserburgh, was criticised for Tokyo* which has an alcohol content of 18.2%. (…)
BrewDog founder James Watt explained on his blog: “Anyone who knows BrewDog, knows beer, or anyone has more common [...]

Drunk in Public

Geoffrey Palmer want to make being drunk in public an offence in New Zealand:
“It’s not an offence to be drunk in a public place but nonetheless police have to deal with (drunk people), but they have nowhere to take them.”
Being drunk in a public place should be an infringement offence that incurs a fine, Sir [...]

Fatties as Folk Devils

Megan McArdle has a great interview in the Atlantic with Paul Campos, author of The Obesity Myth. Campos argues that turning fat people into thin people is impossible, and in any case wouldn’t do much to improve health outcomes. The part I found most interesting, though, is the discussion of status politics and moral panic:
It’s the classic pattern of [...]

That Word Doesn’t Mean What You Think it Means…

The title of this press release from Living Streets Aotearoa – “Helping Kiwis Choose to Walk More Often” – nicely illustrates how seriously most public health advocates, environmentalists, and other do-gooders take the concept of choice.
If you want to help someone make a choice, you could give them information or point out any flaws you [...]