lawyer

Yes, it s true and it s pretty fucking stupid.

Basically they re talking about banning all alcohol advertising to protect the impressionable children which means that all alcohol related advertising in public areas would be illegal. Because apparently adverts encourage people to start drinking younger to which I ll point out that if stuff s illegal just because then someone will sure as hell rebel. And this includes underage drinking so I doubt the advertising blackout will do shit.

The new laws also mean that a restaurant can t for example use a following kind of positive Facebook review in their advertising, social media or otherwise: Great restaurant, absolutely mouthwatering food, make sure to check out their shrimps, nice atmosphere, a large selection of beers for all tastes. They re also forbidden from creating content that can be shared, which has also apparently lead to Finnish government to asking Facebook to ban the Share button in Finland.

Private individuals would be allowed to post about alcohol as much as they want on Facebook, because then it would be viewed as private communication.

This basically means that it will be about impossible for breweries to advertise to the actual consumers.

The logic being; if you don t know there s alcohol, you can t have it.

There s also another law in the works that would greatly restrict the opening hours of bars and restaurants, allowing them to be closed hours earlier. This would also curtail alcohol consumption of course.

I mean, we already pretty much have all alcoholic beverages under a monopoly in Finland but controlling that isn t really working because we can get cheap booze from Estonia (it s only few hours across the gulf, a day trip on the faster ferries). Alcohol has been like this big bad boogieman for a pretty long time in Finland. We tried Prohibition 1919-1932 and that just encouraged making moonshine and smuggling of alcohol and also raised general violence and crime rates. It all kinda goes back to stereotypes really; Finland was for thousands of years the backwater of Europe and everything came here pretty late, including strong alcohol and during long and dark winters there really wasn t much to do but drink. Seriously, there are stories from 17th century about Finns serving in the Swedish army being uncontrollable drunks. And then when temperance movement became a thing in the late 19th century, all of these uncontrollable drunk stereotypes were upped to the max.

With all of these let s control alcohol consumption things going on, it feels like we ve never learnt how to consume alcohol responsibly. When the laws tighten, we drink because fuck the government, when they loosen, we drink to celebrate, it s like there s no middle ground. Sometimes there s a news article about how we should try to be like Mediterraneans with our drinking habits but it doesn t really work out. This has all kinda let into a culture where it s the norm to kinda not drink for like a week and then drink a lot come weekend because Saturday sauna is always a good time for a few cold beers. And it kinda easily leads to overindulging. Most of our crime rates are also tied really closely to alcohol consumption. Most violent deaths in Finland include alcohol, a fight and whatever the closest weapon happens to be and are accidents. And sure, if there was less alcohol involved, the number of those deaths would be less. But the fact remains that people never like to be told what not to do. I won t say anything about those who appear to be perpetually drunk, I don t personally know any.

That s why we sometimes call our society holhousyhteiskunta, a tutelage society.

Personally I ve never been really big on alcohol. I tasted some when I was underage by accident and decided it tasted horrid (and I consider that a good way to discourage underage drinking, choose the shittiest and most disgusting alcoholic beverage and let the kid taste just a bit by the time they want to try again they ll hopefully be old enough to drink responsibly). I drink at most like three or four times a year and I ve never in my life had a hangover because I moderate and stop early enough.

But I do think the government is making stupid decisions about this. They fail to take into account how badly stuff like this has worked in the past and the basic human nature. Could it be done smarter? Dunno, I m not an expert.