France not so happy? Happy hour and liquor bottle sales may be banned in France
May 21, 2008
Too many youth in France getting drunk, says French official, blaming promotions at bars and nightclubs in France.
In a move sure to cause even more than the usual French melancholy, France is said to be considering a ban on bars’ ability to offer happy hours and on the sale of liquor by the bottle in nightclubs in an effort to discourage young people from binge drinking and to curb drunk driving in France.
Etienne Apaire, head of a committee in France heading the French government’s fight against addiction to drugs or alcohol said that the measures are the subject of talks with alcohol manufacturers and distributors in France. Decisions may come within weeks, he said, in anticipation of the summer school holidays. Apaire cited a spike in youth alcohol consumption and drunkenness in France, exacerbated by bars in France adopting the time-honored American tradition of “happy hour”. Begun in the US as a way to help frazzled businessmen to unwind after work, and to attract customers in the slow early evening hours, Happy Hour has become in the US–and now increasingly in France–simply code for a way to get drunk fast and cheaply. With young people in France, as everywhere, having less disposable income than their older working brothers and sisters, they are - intentionally or not - prime targets for bars in France serving cheap alcohol.
Apaire said 2005 research revealed that a quarter of 17-year-olds in France reported getting drunk at least three times in the previous year. A tenth of French 17-year-olds said they got drunk 10 times or more.
Apaire said France might ban “open bar” deals. These are bar promotions that sell customers all they can drink for a set price. Apaire said such schemes encouraged drinking games and drunkenness. The ban on “happy hours”, concerns bars or nightclubs offering cheaper drinks to try to attract customers earlier in the evening.
Other possible measures could include restricting the sale of vodka, whisky and other hard liquor in nightclubs to glasses, and raising the legal drinking age for purchasing any type of alcohol to 18.
Under the law in France today, beer and wine can be sold to people aged between 16 and 18. It is a long French tradition for children at home to be given wine mixed with water at meals. Until recently, one might have argued that French culture not creating a “forbidden fruit” atmosphere around alcohol was one reason why teenage drunkeness did not exist as a problem to anything like the extent that it does in the US, where underage drinking often begins as an act of rebellion or due to peer pressure.
The president of a union in France representing nightclub owners, objected to the measures, calling them stupid and ineffective. He reasoned that people in clubs bought bottles of alcohol to share in groups as a cost-saving measure, much as diners in a restaurant might buy a bottle of wine instead of individual glasses. Apaire appeared unmoved by this argument, and went to say that France would not only be looking at bars and nightclubs but also at French supermarkets, where young people can buy alcohol with almost no restrictions.
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