Alcoholism in France
By D. R. GIME
Paris.
MANY English people seem to believe that the French have discovered a secret of earthly happiness. There are two versions of this myth—one, that the French somehow manage to eat, drink and make merry on a Rabelaisian scale with a minimum of harm to themselves; • the other that, by some inborn gift of moderation, the French only want to take their pleasures within the limits that an enlightened doctor would recommend, that they can be trusted to drink at all hours because they so rarely desire to drink too much. France still has her Gargantuan trencher-men, though now, owing to high prices, these are few in the towns. She certainly has a large class of citizens whose lives are ruled by strict rules of sobriety and self-restraint, taught by a severe family education: But so far is she from having found for the nation as a whole a golden mean-, or the secret of harmless excess, that she has the biggest consumption of alcohol per head of any people in the world, having doubled it in the last seventy years.
Alcoholism is the most serious single social disease of France. Every year there is a wringing of hands about it in the Assembly, when the budget of the Ministry of Public Health is discussed. Before the war anyone who made public moan on the subject was considered slightly comic. Today alcoholism makes the newspaper-headings once or twice a year, just as the population-problem used to do, and with as little apparent effect. This should not perhaps be considered as totally discouraging, for, from lamenting the decline of the birth-rate and doing nothing about it, the French passed after the war to a system of large tax-free family allowances (over a pound a week per child), with the consequence that in twenty years' time France will have a good many more men under twenty-five than the United Kingdom with her substarnially larger population. The problem of alcoholism might have been dealt with no less trenchantly in the period that immediately followed Liberation, had it not been that the, circumstances of the war had very much modified its gravity. The German demands for industrial alcohol substantially reduced the possibility of drink- ing anything alcoholic in most parts of France, with the result that it became difficult to instruct medical students about cirrhosis of the liver, and the admissions to mental hospitals declined notably. Thus, whereas the war had driven bitterly home to France the superiority of Germany as a nation of young men, it concealed the problem of alcoholism. A few steps were indeed taken in the course of the general clean-up after Liberation. A law was introduced which would have caused a gradual diminution of the number of cafés by obliging anyone purchasing one to extinguish simultaneously a second licence by a second purchase. But this was abolished as being an obstacle in the way of returning prisoners-of-war seeking to re-establish themselves in life. It was at this period that the already inflated number of retailers in France was suddenly (and fortunately temporarily) swollen nearly forty per cent. Some type of drinks were quite ineffectively banned, and apéritifs were placed in a class, of goods that could be legiti- mately sold but not pressed upon the public by advertising. This last provision could not remove the many advertisements painted on the sides of houses, but it did compel the replace- ment of the famous advertisement in the Metro, " Dubo—, Dubon—, Dubonnet " by one for " Dubonnet Wine Merchants." The return of the old slogan shows any visitor to Paris that this device has been abandoned.
In Britain the problem of alcoholism has in practice been identified with that of drunkenness. In France this cannot be so, for there the problem of drink is rather that of a cumulative habit of soaking, which may destroy an individual without any of the drunken bouts which used to be frequent in London streets. A man may go on the binge once a month and con- sume much less alcohol than one who is very rarely obviously out of control. Much has been said in France about th undesirability of various fancy drinks and of spirits, but appears that red wine is respOnsible for two-thirds of th trouble—wine drunk in a quantity that would often be goo( going even with beer.
Now wine is the table-drink of at least two-thirds ot the French nation. It is one of France's great expnns Its consumption in reasonable quantities is one of tht graces of French living. It cannot simply be treateil in itself an enemy of the nation. It is produced by one-ancli a-half-million wine-growers—apart from their employees, Indeed the last important occasion on which an attempt was made to use conscript; against a mob in France was ill 1907, when the price of wine fell so low that the starv• wine-growing peasants of Languedoc rioted. The youn soldiers of the 17th Regiment, sent to maintain order, rmainied and thus provided the anti-militarists of France with a fanio and popular song. The problem of maintaining the pricet. wine at a remunerative level for the grower is now a recogni function of government, and, when there is a surplus, lara stocks are bought up, as are also surpluses of sugar-beet a some other crops, and turned into industrial alcohol in ,v excess of what is needed. This price-balancing operation costing the nation fifteen milliards of francs (as many millio pounds) this ;ear.
While excessive consumption of wine is the main trouble that of spirits, especially in certain areas like Normandy stands high. It issassociated with he right of fruit-growers have distilled for their own use S certain quantity of spin duty-free and a further quantity at a reduced duty. farmers are almost as numerous as.rthe wine-growers (ind in part identical with them). Their rights are always tor claimed as being particularly republican and as sacred as4 right to. vote or freedom of speech. In fact, they open, way to all sorts of fraud, and a minimum estimate of losSii revenue to the State from this cause alone is ten milliard fra a year.
To these massive voting interests in metropolitan Fra which make reform difficult must be added the café-keepers' According to figures published last week in the Figaro, th are 588,000 cafés in France as compared with 49,000 bake shops. That means one establishment where you cap dr for every sixty-seven citizens over the age of fifteen. does not include the wine-merchants and grocers where dtii can be bought in bottles.
The broad front of voters who do not want measures tak against alcoholism has lamentably been extended by the pr motion of all French Africans to full citizenship. The spe legislation that protected them was attached legally to th pre-war status as "natives." The import of wine into Cameroons increased four times from the first to second half of last year. The Cameroons also consumed I year sixty times as much spirits as in 1938.
Alcoholism is thus becoming one of the major challenges the democratic method in France. It can only be dealt with by the assertion of general interest over a very broad-based poi cular one. Here is some of the ammunition of the refornius One Paris doctor reports that in the 120 hospital-beds of whi he has charge the number of cases of cirrhosis of the liver las risen from three in 1946 to fifty in 1952. The proportion of women to men suffering from this disease has risen from oak third to one-half. A Nice doctor treated no cases d delirium tremens in 1945, but 150 in 1951. A Bordeaux meni specialist recently stated that, in that area of France, half mental cases are due to alcoholism. In the recent: debate at public health it was stated in the Assembly that the numbcrof occupants of mental hospitals has gone up from 65,0005 December, 1946, to 92,000 in December, 1951. This 1st figure appears to be roughly what had become normal befog the war. It remains to be seen if it will go higher. The name is spending 675 milliards a year on drink, that is ten per cal of the total of personal incomes and more than goes on re The cost to the State of looking after alcoholics is 132 mill jar'. whereas the drink-trade only contributes fifty-three milliards to the Treasury. The loss to production is estimated at 350 milliards; the shortening of the average life of the French male at four per cent.
Gravest of all are the consequences for children. Ninety er cent. of the cases of cruelty to children are due to alcoholism. Seventy-five per cent. of juvenile offenders have alcoholic parents. There is also evidence of a less precise kind tom school-teachers and medical officers of the very grave landicaps of the children of alcoholic parents—very numerous in some areas.
Thus at the moment when France is triumphing over the gayest pre-war threat to her existence—that of fewer births than deaths—the health, both moral and physical, of the 7ounger generation is being exposed to another apparently tver-increasing threat. Opinion will sooner or later make possible a concerted attack on this danger. It is difficult to inagine, however, a method which would have the same :widen effect on alcoholism as family allowances had on the bw birth-rate. One most important adverse factor can only )e removed slowly—very bad housing which makes the café necessary sitting-room. It is a question of persuading the Frenchman to pay higher rents and of his investing his money n housing schemes. M. Claudius Petit, the Minister of Reconstruction, who has burdened his political career with sn apostolate in favour of higher rents, has himself told the nation that it needs at least 200,000 new housing units a year and that he has not yet got the supply above 70,000.
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