Madison NORML

The Post Crescent articles, entitled, "State of Drinking: How our love for alcohol shapes Wisconsin's cultural landscape," document just how ingrained alcohol use and abuse is in state culture and the toll it wreaks. An Audio slideshow: State of Drinking, documents the physical toll on state drinkers click here.

NORML's director, Allen St. Pierre, writing on NORML's blog, recently included the alcohol industry as part of the "5 pillars of marijuana prohibition" click here, "Companies that would have to compete with cannabis and hemp products if it were not for the government’s cannabis prohibition, and therefore lobby for cannabis/hemp to remain illegal and its consumers treated like violent criminals".

While Wisconsin's Tavern League has blocked any increase in the state's beer tax since 1969, state cannabis consumers are more than willing to pay a fair tax to have safe and legal access to a quality product. Thirty years ago people were predicting the end of cannabis prohibition was just around the corner. It's time to tear down the walls of prohibition and embrace cannabis, the last best hope for Planet Earth.

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Analysis ranks state No. 1 for alcohol’s impact on lives
July 5, 2008
By Susan Squires
Source: Appleton Post-Crescent click here

Federal revenue agent Frank Buckley arrived in 1929 to document Prohibition enforcement in Wisconsin. He found more tolerance for drinking than for Prohibition.

“Wisconsin,” he wrote in his report to Washington, “is commonly regarded as a Gibraltar of the Wets — sort of a Utopia where everyone drinks their fill and John Barleycorn still holds forth in splendor.”

Eighty years later, Wisconsin’s reputation is intact. Alcohol goes hand-in-hand with tailgating, snowmobiling, deer hunting, kids’ baseball games and even church functions.

“I’ve been drunker here than anyplace else I’ve been in my life,” comedian Lewis Black told an audience in Madison. “And remember this: You are not — you are not — alcoholics. You, and my hat is off, are professionals.”

But Wisconsin’s legendary propensity for imbibing was grounded in a loose collection of statistics and anecdotes — until now.

Gannett Wisconsin Media developed a unique methodology for demonstrating in quantifiable terms, for what is thought to be the first time, that Wisconsin’s reputation is well deserved.

The state is second to none for the depth and breadth of its drinking culture — from the considerable boost alcohol provides the economy to the human toll it exacts on highways and in hospitals.

That was Gannett Wisconsin’s finding after ranking all 50 states in 10 areas thought collectively to provide the best gauge of the culture of drinking. Those key areas measure the price, availability and consumption of alcohol, along with alcohol’s related criminal justice, social and health impacts.

The newspaper group’s analysis is unique in that it takes into account all 10 indicators to arrive at a composite score for each state. Conceptually, Gannett Wisconsin’s ranking system makes sense, several epidemiologists and experts on alcohol said.

Continues: click here.