Being Responsible Sellers (and Consumers)

Dear class, 

I enjoyed our quarter, and especially last session together very much! Wine is such a convivial and lovely topic. I hesitate to add a sobering entry to our blog here about responsible consumption and sales of alcohol, but it's important to me and I'd love to get others' thoughts on it. 

*Disclaimer: I felt Alyssa set very safe parameters around alcohol consumption in the class, so these comments are strictly about outside experiences.*

Many of us, myself included, have loved ones who are alcoholics. This has weighed heavily on my mind as I have developed my own relationship to alcohol and prepared to sell it with Abbess Brewery. 

For my own consumption, I have some very simple rules around it that help me feel in control. Because I drink often, I drink in small amounts, no more than 7 drinks/week (CDC guidelines here). I also notice if I am drinking because I am trying to alleviate a bad feeling (unhealthy) or enhance a good feeling (healthy). I know other people who never drink alone and people who drink beer and wine but not hard alcohol. There are a lot of ways to go about this well, and I'm always curious to compare notes with other thoughtful consumers. 

Perhaps more important here are the parameters we should be setting around responsible selling. I understand and respect that people have freedom to make destructive choices with whatever means given. But because alcoholism is so common, I wonder what we can do on the business side to help, or at least not to seek to profit from someone's drinking problem. This could look like:

Interpersonal:

1. Modeling responsible drinking (maybe with some of the ideas listed above) and talking openly about those practices with friends and age-appropriate children. 

Regulatory: 

2. Governmental regulation. Maybe making it more of a controlled substance, have to pay for it by card that can be traced to an ID? I'm not sure because I'm not a big government regulation person. 

3. Including information more readily  available in places that sell alcohol about addiction recovery options. 

Businesses:

4. The obvious one here is training bar staff not to over-serve and to take note if someone is demonstrating self-destructive habits with their alcohol consumption. 

5. Offering lower abv and non-alcoholic alternatives. 

6. Encouraging customers to drink water, not serving alcohol without a glass of water as well. 

7. Limiting the amount of alcohol that can be ordered without food. 

Like I said, this isn't an easy topic, but I think it's one that we have a responsibility to consider as consumers and people in the industry, and I value your input. 

All the best,

A