MODERN-DAY MIRACLES: DECLINING PER CAPITA CONSUMPTION AND INCREASED AWARENESS OF ALCOHOL'S DAMAGE IN A DRINKING-ORIENTED SOCIETYAddiction, Volume 103 Issue 4 Page 604-605, April 2008
Some years ago a colleague noted that in France the population had performed the reverse of the biblical miracle of turning water into wine. By treating wine as a necessary component of most meals and many other social occasions, and downplaying the intoxicating properties of alcohol and the damage related to it, despite high consumption rates, it appeared that wine was routinely being transformed into water.
As reported in the paper by Messiah and colleagues [1] and elsewhere [2], France ia among several countries, including Italy [3], that have experienced a dramatic decline in their per capita consumption rate in recent decades. The intensive alcohol control and harm reduction campaign from the early 1990s [4, 5] appears to have reinforced this decline and also produced greater awareness of alcohol-relate issues.
Thus the modern-day miracle of turnng wine into water, has been upstaged, it appears, by two subsequent miracles, that of reducing the volume of alcohol that needs to be transformed, along with increased awareness of the negative potency of alcoholic beverages.
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