Grand news for beer in Finland!
Finland is a very special country. We have been allowing sales of drinks up to 4,7% of alcohol content. However, now the law will change AND food stores will be allowed to sell up drinks up to 5,5% of alcohol. Anything stronger than this needs to be bought from a special store.
This has been a big issue for a long time. There have been experts warning about all the problems Finland will face if the limit will be raised - some have warned that majority of Finnish people will be alcoholics in the future due to this. It has been warned, that when gas stations are allowed to sell 5,5% alcohol, most people stopping to gas stations will start buying beer from there and drive drunk.
Quite many of the experts however are members of the board in Alko, which is the strong alcohol special store owned by the state and has the monopoly over alcohol market in Finland. What a strange coincidence.
But now Finland is going towards it's doom. Finland will allow the sales of a bit stronger beers (and other alcohol) in regular stores. The law change election votes were 98-94, so it was a 4 vote difference.
This is seriously the state of Finland. Finnish people are already consuming quite much alcohol, so I assume people would understand the current methods are not working to reduce issues with alcohol consumption.
I don't even really care about beer, but I'm happy about the decision made today.
Pixabay
Because even before this law Fins didn’t know how to put their drinks away, right.
Law makers are always good for a laugh. Also Finnish ones it seems. 🍻
There are jokes about this. Alko-stores are usually located in big shops, so basically you can get strong beers with same visit easily. However.. now as the strong beers have been in Alko shops, they have never been an issue. Now when you can get in the store, it is a huge problem.
I'm assuming Alko is a magical shop - when you buy strong beer from there, by wizardy and sorcery it will not cause any problems.
I can’t believe the gas stations tho. So many countries in Europe have outlawed the selling of beer at gas stations. Completely, unless consumed with a hot meal for those who also serve meals.
Your neighborhood corner store, or 7-11 who will land on stuff like that like vultures, usually are the most accessible ways of getting beer. Unless you have smaller sized supermarkets too, who often also host nice promos.
I never knew 5.5% was strong btw. I always thought 4.9% was piss but thats probably Belgian bias. Up to 5.5% is pils(ner) or lager strength.
Well the gas station sales are basically as many of the gas stations are "food stores" the same time, so they have small selection of most common food items, like bread, milk, cheese, half ready foods, frozen pizzas etc. so they're selling beer too.
And 5,5% is not actually that strong beer. Most beers around 4,7% are actually kind of "piss" like beer mixed into water. 5,5% is closer to real beer, if you can call it like that.
Cheers. 🍻
Why you are happy with this decision while it will make more drunk people, drivers as you mentioned?
I don't really assume it will cause anything like that, some people are just claiming it would happen. Not everything people believe is true is actually the truth :)
People will drink, one way or the other. It's this weird desire of self-destruction or as I call it desire of relaxation.