I can't be sure, but I think in France if an employee has a drinking or drug problem it's probably a motive for sacking him/her with aggravated fault (Licenciement pour faute grave) and no compensation...
Was that driving round the car park spinning the wheels in a dangerous manner?
Yeah. I can't see something like systembolaget (the Swedish state monopoly on selling anything other the beer) working in France!!
Well, I didn't know about Systembolaget but I just read it is qualified as non lucrative, that's if you consider collecting taxes not lucrative...
Aboslut was sold by the swedish state. And other brands as well. I didn't like that the state owned liquer plants.
Systembolaget in Sweden, Vinmonopolet in Norway, Alko in Finland ..... also Iceland haave a sales monopole and most of the Canadian regions and some states in USA as well. Of course, Systembolaget is not no-profit comany. The profit goes back to the state and into the wellfare system. And to take care of persons that have alcoholic and drug probem is a part of the wellfare.
Hard to say how much and what kind of help your friend in France need. But if a person relize that the alcohol is not good then they should stop drinking. Maybe she needs professional help? Or something you can do with help from friends. I don't believe that drinking less will solve the problem. Out with the alcohol and let something else fill your mind.
That would probably be the best outcome.
That is the whole point and it can buy 5 decades of life. I have met patients who said they didn't care one bit about the extra time if they couldn't drink alcohol.
Denmark has a culture not altogether different from its fellow Scandinavian nations and yet a much more southern attitude towards alcohol. When I was a child, I briefly collected colorful labels for beer bottles, because there were a gazillion small Danish breweries in addition to Carlsberg and Tuborg, who swallowed the whole lot up decades before micro-breweries (re-)emerged. Carlsberg has a museum in Frederiksberg enclosed by Copenhagen. One of the exhibits mention that in the old days, the workers were entitled to ~2L beer during the working day. Any bizarre and true story is that Denmark at one point had an outbreak of scurvy among heavy beer drinkers. Turns out with 30 beers per day, there is no craving for additional calories and the breweries had stopped adding vitamin c to the beer...
I admire loads of things about Sweden, but this is not one of them. I guess I am more live and let live in attitude. When I was a child, Copenhagen was full of drunken Swedes.
Like tobacco taxes, I find there is a huge conflict of interest, because states and making money off habit that are harmful to most people. The French actually once made an analysis of the impact of smoking on state finances. The conclusion was that the state made a ton of money from tobacco taxes and surprisingly saved retirement funds to boot, because heavy smokers died prematurely. I would certainly consider France to have an excellent welfare system, in particular health care tends to rank really high, but this did seem a tad cynical.
You are obviously right but most cannot. That is the whole point. You clearly don't possess an addictive personality. Neither do I with exception of saxophones and mouthpieces, where I have discovered a bizarre and disappointing lack of self-constraint. I won't profess to fully comprehend but it seems like a Jekyll and Hyde thing.
When I was young and worked on ferry between Landskrona and Tuborg I was so sick and tired of the danes; "big eaters", beerdrinking cigarrsmokers (Cecil) .... . I often asked myself. "Why don't they have a better life?" We are all suffering from diffent "deseases" and bad behavior.
I think your friend may need to first discover for herself whether alcohol is the root problem, or whether there is another problem leading to the alcohol. Sometimes treating the cause is more effective than treating the symptom. Maybe some counselling would help before taking the giant step into an alcohol treatment program. That would seem to be less drastic and less traumatic for her as a starting point. Good luck. You seem to be a caring friend.
You are right. Those were folks going on the ferry, because taxation of cigarettes and alcohol was greatly discounted. Effectively, you are making my point that it a duplicitous area for governments to get involved, because they end up benefitting from behavior that is deleterious to the health of their citizens.When I was young and worked on ferry between Landskrona and Tuborg I was so sick and tired of the danes; "big eaters", beerdrinking cigarrsmokers (Cecil) .... . I often asked myself. "Why don't they have a better life?" We are all suffering from diffent "deseases" and bad behavior.
I enjoy a drink, particularly wine, and in my youth I drank quite a lot of beer. Never while playing, though. Apart from the fact that it ruins your sax, I'm not the best of players when sober, and I'm completely rubbish when I've had a drink.
I live close to the town Ystad and the danes from the danish island Bornholm use to come over and shop at Systembolaget. They think the swedish and german beer is much better. But I don't like Systembolaget as a company. To control the alcohol market is good for the public health. And that was what EU thought as well in the EU negotiations back in 1994. Some contries in EU are looking at the Nordic way to control the alcohol market. But I doubt France, Italy and Spain will have something like "Systembolaget".
On that subject, I was once in charge of an employee who was drinking all day, but very functional, up to a point. As it turned out, if one of the other employees came back drunk from lunch, I could give an official warning, on the third warning they'd be fired. However, I could do nothing about the employee drinking Southern Comfort all day, every day, as alcoholism is a health issue, and you can't give warnings or fire people for health issues. The employer offers no help though, as a manager, you're officially required to ignore the problem, and make sure that the employee is not put in a position where they can hurt themselves or others. It's a pity something like you describe wasn't in place back then, her life might have turned out differently.
A tiny minority to say the least given the sheer difference in choice and price.
Prohibition certainly wasn't good for public health and I doubt heavy taxation with government profits from alcohol sales provides a solution. The wealthy don't care about the price and the poor end up destitute to finance their drinking habit. I would much rather see efforts go toward education and improving living conditions for those most likely to seek solace in alcohol.
In a way, I agree but after stumbling upon some of the history behind the alcohol problem I had to rethink my stance. I don't have the exact stats in front of me right now, but sometime around 1817 there was a survey in the United States that indicated that something like 7 out of 10 American men went to sleep drunk every night of their adult life. That seems bad enough that something had to change. It's hard to imagine the alcohol epidemic ever being that bad.
