Le discours alcoologique en France (1918-1954) (1993)

Between 1918 and 1937, the struggle against alcoholism was at its lowest ebb. As war drew to a close, the French not only needed to drown their sorrows in drink, but the medical profession focused at this time on other social scourges, like tuberculosis and drugs. Besides from 1922, wine growing knew a series of overproduction crisis because the effort expended with a view to making the wine experts easier was not sufficient, the public authorities encouraged their citizens, particularly with the aid of the popular press, to drink more "plonk", the "totem drink" with every virtue: food, medicine, "preventive medicine from alcoholism"... To justify this latitudinarianism, which was translated into a calling into question or an intention of watering down the legislation against alcoholism passed between 1915 and 1918, politicians, journalists and doctors, who were friends of wine, put forward the "natural" recession of alcoholism. Baked up with ministerial surveys, they demonstrated that thanks to the steadfast improvement of housing and the expansion of a mass culture: pictures, sports, travelling... workers, main victims of intemperance, turned aside from cabaret and didn't practise the "Saint-Lundi" (Mondays' fun) anymore.
These optimistic remarks, which mistook mass drunkeness for an intention of becoming a chronic alcoholic, missed out the rural addiction and the society "cocktail mania"…; obviously they were controverted by the leagues which were slowly revived in the days following the defeat of the "Popular Front" and a forced prohibition period under the Vichy Government, they were committed to an other fight. From the French Liberation, abstinent people and advocates of moderation didn't try anymore to stop alcoholism but to understand and to cure the sick, in their requests for restriction, they didn't disregard socio-economic conditions, but they suggested other outlets for wine growers: grape trade in fresh and dried fruits, juice and cordials form...
More credible, the discourse against alcoholism of the fifties would not be long in being understood by the elected members of the "Economic and Social Council", anxious to offer a compromise solution between the health improvement and the private interests defence. But at that precise moment, begun an other discourse which is the modem "alcohology" one.