Against BC's New Alcohol Limits

There is no underestimating the reach of the Puritan imagination. Oh yes, there is such a thing, but it goes in an anal-retentive direction, so it doesn't appear much in entertainment and the arts. Instead, it shows itself as a Kafka-esque moral code that turns people into prudes or hypocrites or both.

Take the recent liquor law, which both lowered the acceptable blood level when driving a car, and increased the penalties for crossing the line. Only here's the catch: nobody knows how the line feels. To find out if you've sinned, you need a machine. As with prostate cancer, it grows silently, and only your police officer knows for sure.

At the heart of the so-called Protestant ethic is the Doctrine of the Elect -- put simply, that some of us are destined for heaven and some not, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Just because you do good works, it doesn't follow that you are going to heaven; however, misbehavior is an all but certain indication that you will burn in the barbecue below.

Such fundamental spiritual notions, however loony, have a way of invading the psyche of people who should know better, in a mental time-warp that can have terrible consequences -- as with the "fallen women" concept that imbued police culture and enabled the dirty work on the pig farm to go on and on.

Similarly, I'm beginning to think that organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving are in the process of creating a monster -- a god who can take your car and put you in jail and wreck your life when you didn't know you were doing anything wrong.

Dry history

Ah, memories. My younger brother received the strap for whistling in school. There was a rule he hadn't heard of.

Back then in Nova Scotia, the only liquor legally obtainable was in the government liquor store, and it was handed to you in a sealed bag. If the seal was open in your car (let alone the bottle cap), you were guilty of illegal possession, fined, and shamed. Even with the bag sealed tight as a drum, you could be charged if your car was not on a route that led directly from the liquor store to your home.

And don't even think about "over the counter" liquor -- in a restaurant, for example. The first tavern in the area was built just outside town, in a jurisdiction called Bible Hill. I'm not making this up.

Being a dry town engendered a peculiar drinking culture in Truro. Bootlegging was a growth industry -- in fact, one entrepreneur was said to have a tap in his kitchen sink that ran rum. And as far as drinking was concerned, you were either a teetotaler or you were trying to drive your car down the railway tracks -- a not uncommon offense, at the time.  The laws reflected that view of drinking. Yet nobody thought for a second that one could be drunk and not know one was drunk. The offender was the driver who knew he was drunk but drove anyway, and you threw the book at him.

MADD and its lobbyists have gone that extra step, leading to what the framers of Nova Scotia's drinking laws could only have dreamt of, in which the line is crossed between a war against drunk drivers and a war against drinking itself.

Ingest this, work harder

Every culture has its approved drugs, whether ganja or khat or cocoa leaves. In the Scots Protestant culture that has dominated Canada's political and cultural institutions since the 19th century, the approved non-prescription drugs have been acetylsalicylic acid (Aspirin), caffeine and nicotine. 

What do these three drugs have in common? They enable workers to toil harder. And for longer hours. And despite a headache. They are the drugs of the Protestant ethic, revving us up and keeping us awake so that we may forge a better world.

How did alcohol get into the mix? Well of course Canadian institutions are also a product of European Catholics, who use real wine in church and drink it while eating; and the Irish, who will drink a bottle of ink in a pinch; and of course the Church of England -- plummy tipplers, sipping their port and brandy after the hunt. 

Did Scots Protestants drink? You betcha. But only in vast quantities, drunk over a time span that necessitated throwing up -- preferably, but not necessarily, in the loo. I have with my own eyes seen a gentleman in Glasgow hop onto the back of a moving double-decker while simultaneously depositing the contents of his stomach straight into the storm drain, neat as you please.

(Please believe me: I would in no way recommend this type of person as a role model for our children.)

If you remain unconvinced that more than a whiff of the Roundhead has entered into our public discourse on drinking and driving, I ask you: Do you live within walking distance of a bar? More tellingly, ask yourself: Which is served within walking distance -- coffee or alcohol? And can you name three good bars in your town, by heart?

So now we have these laws in which you can't really drink anything and drive with any assurance that you are not a criminal, in a province where you have to take your car in order to get to a bar.

Before we all go MADD

Bars are simple institutions: a roof, a number of tables and seats, a counter, washrooms, and booze. I have been in bars all over the world that consisted of nothing more. So why aren't there more of them in B.C.? More tellingly: why is a liquor license a license to print money? 

Answer: alcohol bad; money good.

Toronto was once the model of Scots Protestant rectitude, in which you filled out a form and then paid for your bottle -- before you were actually allowed to see it. 

Now there are bars all over the city, tiny joints decorated in the personal taste of the owner, who is in a no less marginal position than neighbouring shoe stores and, yes, coffee joints. In Toronto, a bar is in the same position as said coffee joint, and in keeping with the golden rule of western civilization: Stimulants in the morning, depressants at night.

Lacking appropriate adjustments in the granting of liquor licenses, it all looks like a craven capitulation of a hypocritical government to the fundamentalist wing of pressure groups such as MADD.

It will be interesting to see the future statistics indicating lives saved by the new laws; rather, it will be interesting to see how the stats are massaged. Yes, yes, even one death is too many, and the photographs look terrible. 

Also interesting will be the unintended consequences. Look for increased vehicle traffic in quiet residential areas for example, streets with little likelihood of a roadblock -- meaning, street hockey might not be such a good idea this winter. And look for an easing of the stigma around a DUI offense, as the offender looks less like a criminal and more like a victim of circumstance, as fellow citizens sigh, "There but for the grace of God..."