Wine bricks saved the U.S. wine industry during Prohibition (2015)
One cool thing about the pandemic is that many countries took the opportunity to run large-scale social experiments under the guise of Covid Restrictions. I expect social scientists will be digging into this data for years to come.One experiment in South Africa was banning the sale, or transportation, of alcohol. (Production and consumption was still allowed, just not sale or transportation.) This resulted in a marked decrease in hospital admissions, traffic accidents and domestic crimes. [1]The ban would morph during the first year of Covid, alternately covering things like trading hours, availability in restaurants and so on. Some restrictions were more effective than others, and overall effectiveness decreased as the population got smarter about stocking up with sufficient quantities to bypass any restrictions.Even the hint of restrictions now (such as was rumored to happen, but did not happen, when Omicron was first recognized) resulted in huge surges of sales.
Generally speaking though more restrictions resulted in fewer hospital admissions.Clearly prohibition taught us that a blanket ban on alcohol just incentivizes organized crime. So it's not like a long-term ban is useful. But the effects of lowering alcohol consumption are also clear. Balancing these two very conflicting points of view is going to be a challenge for society as we move forward. [2][1] Clearly not all decreases are solely because of this, less traffic means fewer accidents for example, but it's considered to be a high contributing factor.[2] https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/547654/what-all-t...