Czech delirium

The country is discussing smoking, but alcohol is a more urgent problem. A considerable part of the 100 million litres of pure alcohol that Czechs drink every year flows through our throats during New Year's Eve. Occasional drinkers reach for a glass, while experienced boozers break records. It does not look like a good idea to haunt people with alcohol regulation on New Year's Eve.

Better to put off reading this text until after the festivities, when hung-over drinkers are penitent, streets are full of broken glass and moderators bring the first reports on dead drivers, injuries and fights. The right moment to realise that the Czech Republic has a real problem with alcohol, which – unlike its Western peers – it fails to admit.

Close behind heroin

A considerable part of Czech society is remarkably allergic to the word „regulation“. Forty years of totalitarianism, Klaus-sponsored economic liberalism and a lack of trust in EU rules have made Czechs associate most attempts at steering societal development with bans and Orwellian restrictions of liberty.

Of course, it is nonsense to ban alcohol. This drug has been linked to human civilisation for millennia, and there are many ways in which people and alcohol can co-exist with no harm done. But the relationship has become quite problematic in Western society over the last 50 years.

Alcohol consumption (in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe) has roughly…