America Awash in Mixed Messages on Alcohol

Americans are confounded by often contradictory laws and societal messages regarding alcohol use, the New York Times reported Oct. 9.

Lawmakers in Kansas, for example, recently passed a tough new drunk-driving law, and then lifted a ban on Sunday alcohol sales a few weeks later. TV networks ban liquor ads but gladly embrace beer ads. Wal-Mart is getting into the alcohol retailing business even as it bans alcohol use at all corporate events.

"There are these really ambiguous messages about alcohol that you end up receiving from the leadership of the country," said Paul M. Roman, a sociologist at the University of Georgia. "The messages end up being very mixed up and very confusing. And this ambivalence has been around a long time."

The issue gets to the heart of the American character, a mixture of Puritanism and free will.

The alcohol industry has lobbied for easing restrictions like Sunday-sales bans, with state lawmakers agreeing even as they implore people to drink in moderation and avoid driving drunk. The bottom line: money. "This was an economic issue," said Tom Groneman, director of Alcohol Beverage Control in Kansas, referring to the Sunday sales law. "It keeps the dollars in Kansas."