KIDS DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE AS MUCH

The zero-tolerance zealots of the early temperance movement would certainly
beg to differ but it appears Canadians - or most of them - are finally
boozing more responsibly.

Sure, there are still far too many idiots who get behind the wheel loaded
to the gills and kill or maim innocent people.

Like 19-year-old Christopher Goodstoney who rammed his truck into a car
while high on booze and pot west of Calgary, killing four people.

Goodstoney, who didn't have a licence, will be out of jail in the blink of
an eye, however, after receiving only a five-year sentence last month.

With the loss of four young lives so brutally, so unnecessarily, it's hard
to believe that we have made progress as a society in the battle against
irresponsible drinking.

But the tide is turning, says Brian Kearns, executive director of programs
and services for AADAC.

In the period between 1985 and 1995, for instance, the percentage of
drinkers in Alberta dropped from 83% to 76%, according to AADAC stats.

Over the same period, per capita consumption of alcohol in Alberta
decreased 24%, from 11 litres to 8.4 litres.

The best news is that licence suspensions as a result of drunk driving
convictions declined 43%, from 19,795 in 1984-85 to 11,344 in 1993-94.

On the downside, the percentage of Alberta drivers involved in fatal
collisions who had been drinking before the accident has hovered around 20%
throughout the 1990s.

However, young people are displaying a responsibility around alcohol these
days that wasn't there in previous generations, notes Kearns.

Designated drivers have become practically de rigueur around bars.
Bartenders will cut you off if you've had too much to drink and companies
wouldn't dream of holding office parties without making sure their sozzled
employees take cabs home, he adds.

It appears we've finally grown up.

Heck, the current theory is that booze is even good for us, in limited amounts.

A century ago, even a drop of the demon rum reportedly led to everything
from moral decay to insanity.

Consider this offering from the Royal Commission on the Liquor Traffic,
presented to Parliament in 1895:

"The facts set out in this report make clear that much disease, insanity,
idiocy and other things which go to increase the dependent classes is due
to the liquor habit."

The chapter on the "physical effects of intemperance" is particularly amusing.

One Toronto doctor told the commission: "I have no doubt in my own mind
that intemperance in parents produces almost absolute degeneracy in
children."

Across the border, the prohibition movement was making even wilder claims,
like the warnings by some U.S. doctors that drinking could lead to
spontaneous combustion.

The natural fallout of the demonization of alcohol - and prohibition in
Canada and the U.S. in the 1920s and '30s - was that booze became a symbol
of generational rebellion for college kids of that era, says an Addiction
Research Foundation expert.

Young people took to booze then like their counterparts turned to pot in
the '60s and '70s, says Dr. Robin Room, chief scientist with the ARF.

Booze consumption took a huge leap during the period after the Second World
War and didn't start declining until the 1980s, amid rising concern over
drinking and driving, he says.

But there are warning signs of a backlash by young people, a new upswing in
all kinds of drug use, particularly among teens, Room notes.

To some extent, the turnaround is a reaction to the "just say no" anti-drug
campaign in the U.S. and the recent expression of rebellion in Hollywood
movies, he suggests.

Let's hope our young people have more smarts than the average Hollywood
producer.

Copyright (c) 1998, Canoe Limited Partnership.