ALCOHOL IN FRANCE. INCREASE OF SPIRIT DRINKING.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 135, 4 December 1909, Page 13

ALCOHOL IN FRANCE. INCREASE OF SPIRIT DRINKING.

The excessive consumption of spirits in France is, according to several medical men who have recently given voice to their opinions, one of the main reasons for tho "wine crisis" now prevailing in France, reports the Paris Daily Mail. Less than fifty years ago Frenchmen consumed per head annually less than 3i pints of alcohol. To-day the average adult Frenchman drinks seventy pinte of spirits at lOOdeg of strength-^that is, almost equivalent to 165 pints of brandy — a yeai. Thir.ty years ago France contained a wine shop or cafe for every 109 inhabitants. Today there is one for every forty. Liquorselling establishments in Paris number 30,000, while London, whose population is more than double, has only 6000. Dr. Bertillon, the head of the Municipal Statistical Department, says there are 1,378,000 distilleries in" France. In some parts of the country the people take alcohol as others drink water, consuming nearly two pints daily. An alarming aspect of this question is the rapid strides made in absihthe drinking and the fact that children are becoming familiar with tho poison Of a class of forty-nine pupils thirty recently . acknowledged that they had tasted absinthe, and in a class of sixtythree children between six and nine year 3 ol age twenty-four admitted that they were given brandy .every day. Whoreever the consumption of spirits has increased the drinking of wine has decreased.