Prohibition didn’t begin as Prohibition. It was a bottom-up movement embraced by working people but seized on by temperance campaigners, who turned it into a disastrous social experiment that’s a byword for authoritarian overreach. Prof Dan Malleck from Brock University in Canada is a medical historian who has studied Prohibition and its fall-out and charted the rise of the contemporary neo-temperance movement.
In this special Drinks Insider episode, Dan discusses the history of the temperance movement, highlighting its moral and economic underpinnings, and compares it to the current neo-temperance movement. He critiques their selective use of research, particularly the attempt to undermine J-curve research, that associates moderate drinking with lower mortality.
This episode explores the unintended consequences of prohibitionist policies, both historically and in contemporary contexts such as Australia's tobacco control measures. The conversation does a deep dive into the question of how to balance public health concerns with individual liberty.
There is a massive fight brewing in the United States, and it's over the question of how much alcohol people can safely drink. Every...
Ian Ford arrived in China in 1995, started importing wine in 1999, and has spent the decades since watching the market transform from an...
How do you launch a category-busting brand from New Zealand and storm into the US market? Lisa King can tell you, because she’s done...