Another day, another warning about the perils of alcohol from a body that should know better. The World Health Organisation, which just a few years ago was prescribing solitary confinement as the cure for our ills, has recently announced the preferred level we should be drinking every day: zero, zip, nada – not a drop. Last week a Professor Nutt – nominative determinism in action if ever I saw it – was a little more generous. He suggested we would be safe with ‘one glass a year’. He was joined last weekend by a dreary columnist in the Financial Times, who said he took up drinking at 30 but wishes he hadn’t; it would be better for his health.
What madness is this? As the Italians say: ‘la madre degli imbecili è sempre incinta’, or the mother of imbeciles is always pregnant. The pint-sized Mayor of London has joined the debate by adding his opinion that cannabis should be decriminalised – presumably in the hope that the addled smokers will lose their minds sufficiently enough to vote for him.
Alcohol looks destined to follow tobacco and oil as the unholy trinity of the 21st century. What is prompting this puritanical prohibition? Is it a new atheism? All the great religions have wine at their core. For Christians, wine is literally the blood of Christ, drunk at every service. For Jews, it is a sacred and symbolic element in many rituals, ceremonies and traditions. As the Talmud says: ‘There is no joy without wine.’
Only Muslims have turned their backs on booze. A university professor in Saudi Arabia explained the prohibition to me as a necessary result of what happens when you make alcohol out of dates – something incredibly strong, which when combined with extreme temperatures, can produce combustible effects. In the circumstances, probably better to avoid it altogether.
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