LTimes: Nanny state fails to wean Swedes from the bottle

January 09, 2004
Nanny state fails to wean Swedes from the bottle
By Roger Boyes
For many, happiness is a booze cruise to Denmark to escape high prices at home

THE toughest anti-alcohol regime in the European Union is collapsing in the
face of Brussels regulations that have forced Sweden to end its draconian
limits on imports of booze.


The abolition of those limits at the beginning of this month has sparked a
shopping trolley revolution, with thousands of Swedes flocking abroad to stock
up on whisky and wine.

This is wrecking the state monopoly on liquor sales, robbing the Government of
revenue, and threatening to revive a tradition of binge-drinking that Sweden
sought to eliminate when it imposed controls on alcohol in 1917.

Judging by the crowds on the Elsinore ferry — Elsinore being the Danish home
not only of Hamlet but also hundreds of cheap drink stores — Swedish society
is in for a shock. “We are sick of being punished for drinking wine. It’s
just ridiculous,� said Erik Sjoegren, a Swedish engineer who had just loaded
up his trolley with crates of chianti on his brief expedition to Denmark.

The economic logic is overpowering: a bottle of cheap red wine in Sweden’s
state-controlled shops starts at 60 Swedish crowns or around £4.50. Some 70
per cent of the price is made up of alcohol tax and the shop’s commission.
Now, Swedes are allowed to import 10 litres of spirits, 90 litres of wine and
110 litres of beer on every trip abroad.

It is difficult to see how the state network, known as systembolaget, which
buys from a few authorised importers, can survive.

This is, in the view of Swedish intellectuals, the beginning of a battle
between the rights of the individual (to decide if and when and how quickly to
get drunk) and the state. The history of hard drinking and that of Sweden are
intimately intertwined. Meddle with the alcohol habit and you change the very
structure of society.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Sweden was a poor agricultural economy:
the tedium of the fields, the long, dark nights and the ease with which
potatoes could be converted into alcohol made drunkenness part of the social
fabric. The Lutheran Church recognised the problem early and started a
temperance movement which still boasts hundreds of thousands of members.

The industrialisation of Sweden brought together employers — irritated that
weekend hangovers virtually wrote off Monday as a working day — and unions.
The country, it was agreed, was being pickled by excessive drink. The average
Swede was drinking 46 litres of spirits a year. “Women and children had a
terrible time of it,� a government report said.

“The alcohol consumption of the men exposed them to violence and hunger.�

Rather than launch a complete prohibition, Swedes began rationing in 1917. Men
were given a ration book and alcohol intake dropped.

But the move came to be seen as a step towards a Big Brother society and
doctors argued that rationing made alcohol seem more glamorous. The system was
abolished in 1955 and gradually the systembolaget shops became the primary
method of controlling drinking habits.

Today there are 460 state shops across the country and it is impossible to buy
strong alcohol elsewhere. Until recently, these shops were forbidding places,
resembling the parcels depot of a post office.

For decades, the sales clerk had a red light on his desk; when it flashed at
random intervals, he had to check the customer’s identity. Anyone under 20
was, in any case, banned from buying alcohol and the manager was obliged to
check the ID of those who looked under the age of 25. The red lights have gone,
but the rules still apply.

There is no attempt to make drink attractive. All advertising is forbidden. A
wide range of cheap wines are available in the shops, but many of them are in
unattractive cardboard cartons. The shops, until recently, were shut on
Saturdays, and as a result queues snaked around the block on Friday afternoons
as half a million Swedes tried to pick up their weekend supplies.

“The drinking habits of Swedes are fundamentally different from other
countries,� says Hakan Leifman, a Stockholm sociologist. “When we drink, we
drink a lot.�

The established pattern has not changed since the beginning of the 20th
century. Little or nothing is drunk from Monday to Friday, but on Saturday the
young, working-class Swede sets out on a 48-hour mission to drink to oblivion.
Most violent crimes are committed at weekends. “With the last drink comes the
first punch,� runs a Swedish proverb.

Systembolaget is increasingly being seen as a repressive instrument. The
gourmet Swede regards it as an insult that he has to queue in the shop and
order a good wine for dinner. Delivery of the bottle can take up to a week. The
taxation is huge and a deterrent; the state shops have an annual turnover of
just under ?2 billion (£1.4 billion).

The revolt began in earnest in the mid-1990s. When Sweden joined the EU in
1995, Brussels allowed the state alcohol distribution system to continue. But a
doughty shopkeeper, Harry Frenzen, started to sell wine in his village food
shop. He was arrested, but argued: “We are individuals and we don’t need
the Government to nanny us.�

Mr Frenzen, a bearded, bear-like man who wears a sea captain’s hat, led the
appeal to the European Court in Luxembourg and won.

One research commission predicted 600 more alcoholrelated deaths and 3,000
alcohol-fuelled muggings annually if the systembolaget network collapses.

STIFF MEASURES
* The 460 state alcohol stores have a turnover of just under ?2 billion
(£1.4 billion). A quarter of those sales used to be on Friday afternoons as
Swedes stocked up for a weekend binge

* You cannot drink before 1pm on Sundays

* Nobody under 20 can buy strong beer, spirits or wine

* Seventy per cent of the price of a bottle of wine goes in taxation

* If 0.02 per cent alcohol is found in your blood while driving, you face
six months in jail. If 0.15 per cent alcohol is discovered, you face jail for
up to a year

* Alcohol was rationed between 1917 and 1955. Men got four litres of
spirits a month, unmarried women one litre, and married women were not given a
ration book at all

* Anyone picked up for public drunkenness is held overnight, then
referred to a detoxification programme.

* Sweden, with a population of 8.6 million, has an estimated 300,000
alcoholics


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...956703,00.html