I can't believe I haven't posted about this before, but in Sweden alcoholic drinks (with an alcohol content greater than 3.5%) are sold to the public only in state-run stores called the Systembolaget. Of course you can also buy drinks in pubs, cafes and restaurants (because who doesn't want to pay $10 for a beer and $15 for a cosmo?), but if you want to drink something at home you've got to go to the "System" (pronounced approximately "sis-tame"). Aside from the limited opening times (closed around 2pm on Saturday and closed on Sunday), and the prices, which are probably more a result of tax than anything to do with the System itself, the whole thing seems to work pretty well. The stores are bright, modern, well-stocked, conveniently located (for us anyway), and apparently they'll order any bottle of anything for you from all over the world. Just get ready to hand over the SEK.What is most fascinating to me about the System monopoly is what is represents about the Swedish relationship to alcohol. I don't pretend to understand this relationship fully, but it seems to me as a casual observer that Swedes have a love/hate relationship with alcohol that strikes me as not too dissimilar to the American relationship with the bottle. It's that same puritanical thing about booze being evil because it makes you lose control while at the same time loving to have a drink (or two or fifteen). Friends tell me that it's still considered a bit unseemly to drink wine during the week, but that the attitude has relaxed a lot in the last 10 years.
This "ad" (I don't know what else you'd call it) by the Systembolaget was recently in the paper:
The title, on either side of the bifurcated viking dude, says "We Swedes came up with the smartest way of selling alcohol (maybe because we needed it more than others)." I love this. It's so Swedish to think the Swedish way is best and to be so self-reflective at the same time. The "ad" goes on to say that before the monopoly was formed in 1955 people drank 4 times as much as today and the problem was "enormous." It claims that studies show if alcohol were sold in grocery stores, consumption would go up by 30%, which would lead to about 1600 more deaths and 16 million more sick days every year.I have no doubt the stats are true. Maybe after we get a public option for health care Obama should try to form a national alcohol monopoly? Or else he could just shoot himself in the foot and hand the presidency to the Republicans for the next century.
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5 comments:
So we Swedes can't think we've got the best answer to one little thing, but its oké for you foreigners to sit in judgement as if (especially) you Americans have the best answer for everything and you expres surprise when somewhere else does something half decent.
Is it not time to go back to the land that came up with the idea of prohibition?
Err "sven," read my post again. I LIKE the System so no need to be hostile and I think it's fine for the Swedes to like it, too. And read the rest of my blog before you judge -- aside from burritos I don't think Americans have the answer for much of anything.
America has it's share of state stores. They generally have limited hours that they are open and yes they are a monopoly unlike open states where the pricing is competitive.
I once wanted to buy on a Sunday, I was told I had to go to the "state store" by numerous people. Not one of them bothered to tell me that it was closed due to it being Sunday. I'm not sure of the origin, but this is called a "blue law". It helps insure that the workers show up at their jobs on Monday!
Seattle (all of WA actually) is the same. Beer and wine can be purchased in a grocery store. Anything else you have to go to a special liquor store. It has worked to deter us from having tequila on hand - a major bummer
I'm reading a book called "The Geography of Bliss" right now, about a man who travels the world, seeing what happiness means in different countries. I just read a bit about Iceland, and this passage seemed awfully fitting: "Icelanders practice bracketed indulgence. Everything in moderation, they believe, including moderation. It's perfectly acceptable to drink yourself comatose on the weekend, but so much as sip a glass of Chardonnay on a Tuesday night and you're branded a lush. Icelanders attribute this oddity, like all of their peccadilloes, to their Viking past. The theory goes like this: During the harsh days of yore, people never knew when the next catch of fish or crop of vegetables might arrive, so when it did, they devoured it greedily. Of course, nowadays there isn't a shortage of anything in Iceland, except sunlight, but the old binge mentality remains, like an appendix or tailbone. Only more fun."
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