On Public Drinking

On my afternoon coffee break, I decided to go for a walk down Jasper Avenue. It was a nice day—exceptionally nice, given that it’s 20C+ in October—and a walk seemed like the thing to do.

As I walked along, I decided that I’d stop in at the Jasper 105 Sobey’s Urban Fresh location and pick up something to drink. Being the “boutique” grocery store that they are, this location carries a variety of craft-brewed sodas that are chilled and ready to drink.

I picked up something in a brown bottle which I first thought to be a fancy root beer. It turned out to be a strange sort of dealcoholized beer. I put it back on the shelf and looked for something else.

Then, I changed my mind.

It’s a hot day, I thought, a cold beer would be nice. And since this is dealcoholized, I can drink it on the walk back to the office.

While it turned out that it tasted more like a strange, citrus-y combination of real beer and root beer (it was), I couldn’t help but think that it probably looked like I was walking down the street sipping a beer. This, in turn, got me thinking about public drinking.

Socially Acceptable Public Drinking?

I’ve visited places where public drinking is socially (and, often, legally) acceptable. People can buy a beer from a street vendor and drink it as they walk. This can be very nice on a hot day. Walking around Havana with a cold Cristal or Bucanero is way more satisfying than doing so while drinking a Castro Cola.

A cold beer beats a cold pop any day of the week. Hell, with the exception of water, there is nothing more satisfying on a hot day than a cold beer. Even terrible beer is amazing if the weather is hot enough and the can is cold enough.

But back to public drinking. Yes, I enjoyed it. No, I was never drunk while doing it. And, as near as I could tell, neither were any of the locals who were doing the same.

While Havana (and Cuba in general) certainly has it’s share of social problems, public alcoholism didn’t seem to be one of them.

There are also many places in Europe where public drinking is legal. While public drunkenness is sometimes more of a problem in these regions, it’s usually the result of tourists who are drunk on the novelty of being able to drink in the streets as much as on the actual alcohol.

So, should public drinking be socially acceptable? Would this fly in Canada?

I’m certainly no expert on these matters, but I suspect that it could work, so long as public intoxication remained something that was both socially and legally unacceptable.

Sure, there would be problem drinkers who’d be drunk on the street at 10am, but those people are already doing that. I’m not sure that making public drinking acceptable would dramatically worsen the situation. (Then again, maybe it would; have any studies been conducted on this sort of thing?)

Personally, I think it would be nice to be able to go for a picnic at Hawrelak Park and enjoy a beer or two while you take in the sights and sounds of the river valley. Even better would be to walk along the banks of the North Saskatchewan with a good friend and a good beer.

As long as people aren’t getting fall-down drunk in public, I fail to see the problem.

But then, maybe I’m wrong. I’m certainly not an expert on the effects of alcohol on societies beyond some very general effects that are hard to miss—alcoholism and alcohol abuse—but are these the norm? Would they become the norm in a culture where public drinking (though not public drunkenness) is socially acceptable?

What do you think? Would socially acceptable public drinking be awesome or awful?