The United States of Booze

                        The United States of Booze

                         Published in Marietta Daily Journal Feb. 26, 2017

            The reason my father hated alcohol was that his father and only brother loved it.  One reason I hate it is that so many students I’ve taught loved it also.

            My father didn’t like what alcohol led to when his father and brother consumed it.  I never liked what it led to when high school and college students consumed it.  Memories of the deaths of students killed by alcohol on Saturday nights still plague my mind.  What a waste!  What a senseless thing for a nation to have such an intense love affair with a commodity that kills, maims, and destroys.

The ads tell us to drink in moderation.   There’s one thing for sure: there’s no such thing as moderate death.  Dead is dead.  A lost limb is a lost limb.  

            Alcohol-related statistics don’t seem to bother Americans.  We label alcohol an “adult beverage,” pretending our kids understand that they shouldn’t drink until they are of age.  Ha!

            Yes, we love our alcohol.  Gotta have it after work.  Gotta have it in our hands as we stroll around at parties.  Gotta stock it in our homes because it would offend our guests if they weren’t offered wine. 

            Georgia has had at least two governors who didn’t like alcohol.  At a political gathering over a decade ago I told Governor Joe Frank Harris that I appreciated his stand on drinking.  He replied that the only people who ever brought it up were reporters.

            The governor recounted an exchange with a reporter who asked, “When you’re traveling abroad seeking industry for Georgia, don’t you think you should respect your hosts and drink with them?”  Governor Harris said he replied, “Don’t you think any host I visit should respect me if I choose not to drink?”

            At another event, my wife quietly said to First Lady Mary Perdue, wife of Governor Sonny Perdue, “I appreciate the fact that you don’t serve alcohol.”  The First Lady’s reply was, “We don’t serve it in our permanent home, so we don’t think we should serve it in our temporary home.”

 Most public officials simply don’t hold such convictions.  A close political friend said to me once, “If anyone can’t be moderate about their drinking, that’s their problem.”  True, at least until the immoderate drinker gets on the highway.  Then it’s everybody’s problem, including those who preach moderation.

            But Jesus performed his first miracle by turning water into wine.  Yes, and my Italian sister-in-law was appalled when she came to America and observed what we call “drinking.”  In America she saw drinking and drag racing mixed on a flat stretch of road in front of our house.  She frowned to learn about drunkenness and its resulting carnage.

             In her faltering English she declared, “In Trieste, we no do this.  Wine be like water.”  Perhaps ancient Israel’s wine was more like Italy’s than America’s.  If Antonia were still living, she would be aghast that in 2013 over 290,000 “Amedicans” were severely injured by drunk driving crashes.

America is awash in booze.  We’re now even making it at college.  My wife’s alma mater, Middle Tennessee State University, is one of many colleges that now offer a degree in Fermentation Science.  Wonder how many millions the brewing industry is contributing to the university now. 

Located in Murfreesboro about halfway between Jack Daniels country and Nashville (the Baptist Vatican), MTSU has no problem teaching fermentation to undergraduate students who are too young to sample their fermented products legally in Tennessee.    

Oh, I forgot.  In 2016 the Tennessee legislature passed a law allowing college juniors and seniors under 21 to taste the fermented product they created as part of their coursework. Students can’t swallow, though. 

 Dear Lord!  What a message this sends.  Teach students to make a product that they can’t consume.  Sounds like an admission of alcohol’s danger, to me.  Just what we need.  Less emphasis on mathematics, language, history, and pure science and more on producing liquor.  Smoking is bad, bad.  Producing alcohol at college is good.

            According to a 2014 Center for Disease Control report, just over 88,000 deaths each year are traced to alcohol use.  I suppose that out of 321 million people, that’s a moderate number we can accept.  Moderate drinking, moderate number of deaths.  No problem, except the grieving families who lost a loved one.        

So drink up, America.  Just be moderate.  But watch out for the immoderate ones, especially on Saturday nights.  And pray that your kids and grandkids will do the same.  But expect the typical results, because your moderation is not working.

Roger Hines

February 22, 2017