The table I used lists both the official and the unofficial amount, but I agree that the latter must necessarily be based on estimates. Also, in Southern Sweden, there is a steady traffic over the border to Denmark lugging tons of alcohol eastwards every day, so the real figures for those two countries are no doubt slightly closer (Denmark lists with the same figure as the UK).
ETA, oh, you already mentioned the border trade.
Hans
Ah, I see they have calculated with estimates of unofficial consumption, that makes the numbers a little more reliable for sure, but I'm still surprised at 10.3L/an/cap - it still seems low to me, but of course I may have a skewed view having grown up in an area where it was more common than not to down a
.75L bottle of vodka or Brännvin per weekend. At least. My dad (who I grant you is probably not representative of humanity, much less any sub-population of same) could easily down 4*.75L per weekend. On his own. It helped that it only cost him the price of a few Kgs of *****, a couple packs of ****** ***** and a small pot of tomato purée of course.
If the people of my municipality had been representative of Sweden, I would say consumption is actually four times the stated amount. Fortunately, I think they're not. (Dear FSM please say they're not)
Sweden usually show good response to government campaigns appealing to our better selves than to prohibitions and intense taxation, though. We're obstinate like that: ask us nicely to please lay off the booze and the fags and half the nation quits over night. Tax us and prohibit **** and people take it up
just because. Of course, it helped that we used to have a high level of trust in our government officials. That stopped in 2001.
During the seventies and eighties there were two major campaigns that actually did impact people's drinking and smoking. The people who grew up during the "Non Smoking Generation" campaign actually took up smoking to a much smaller extent than those before - who were simply told it was a nasty habit - and the one after - who got their tobacco taxed until it cost so much to smoke it became hip like Cristal.
The somewhat naive "Spola Kröken" ("Flush the Booze") probably had no huge impact on consumption (although we have fairly decent numbers for expecting mothers who dutifully stay away from alcohol and tobacco) but neither did taxing it by %vol until a bottle of Explorer (notorious in Sweden for being high in alc/krona and therefore so popular Systembolaget kept them under the counter to save the staff having to run back and forth for the same thing - yes, you could only buy over counter, that has since changed - prompting it to be nicknamed "Half a Bend" because staff bent halfway to the floor to get it) - and a bottle of Chateaunoef du Pape cost about the same... (Yes, I'm exaggerating, but damn our winos smelt good.)
Sweden and alcohol has a long and sad story. In the early nineteenth century it was common to pay workers in booze. In the eighteenth century men women and children started the day with a dram - it was considered healthy. (And compared to Stockholm's water supply, it probably was.)
Getting the common man sober used to be the preoccupation of free kirks, temperance movement, orders of different kinds and the unions/workers' movements.
Keeping him pished used to be what state and employers did. Of course, that all changed once state and employers were made responsible for the workers' health. Then it was all suddenly: don't drink this, don't smoke that and for ****'s sake, whatever you do
don't eat anything!
So the question "Is it working?" - well, probably not. It seemed to be working for a brief time somewhere between 1955 and 1992 - because back then we still thought that they governed us by our leave and that we were in it together. If the surgeon general said "Don't smoke that" most of us went "Ok." These days, that would probably result in a request for SG to go **** himself.
You could say there was a correlation, but no proven causation, between our strict measures and our relatively moderat consumption of AllThingsBadForYou.
(And just like the Mormons, working by the notion that the sum of all vice is a constant - not partaking in anything of the above, we ate a lot of sugar and made a lot of babies.)
