Editorial July 11, 1970 Issue

Warfare Against Strong Drink

Alan A. Aylwin

Drug abuse has been a recognized evil for many years. And recently there has been a crescendo of opposition to cigarette smoking. But why is so little being said and done about the use of beverage alcohol? Here is a scourge that takes its toll in every walk of life. Alcohol itself is a narcotic, and it undermines health, disrupts family life, ruins promising careers, costs industry millions of dollars in absenteeism and substandard work, and, as a current series in The Christian Science Monitor points out, is the cause of thousands of fatal accidents on our highways.

The cocktail has become generally accepted as a pleasant social amenity, a pick-me-up, a relaxer, a lubricant for conviviality. But it is high time that society used the same indices to measure the effect of alcohol that it does with drugs and tobacco. It is common knowledge that to the hooked alcoholic, liquor is as deep a demand as heroin is to the drug addict or a cigarette is to a chain smoker. In each instance, unless the appetite is destroyed, it totally envelops and seriously harms its victim.

Any sane person would deplore this result. But how about the so-called moderate drinker? Does he realize that even a couple of drinks before driving can so warp his judgment that he and his car become a sort of lethal, uncertainly guided missile?

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