Comité de Salut Public drinks bill...?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I heard a reference to the Committee of Public Safety's drinks bill on a radio programme a couple of years ago, but I've never come across a written reference to it. Does such a thing exist, or was it a post-Thermidor 'hey, don't blame us, we were drunk all the time' excuse? I've also heard similar about the Tribunal, but again haven't found a reliable, non-anecdotal, non-hostile source.
I'm also aware that the average alcohol intake was universally far higher from the dawn of time until the 19thc - it was safer than water!
On a related issue, does anyone know if the opiate laudanum was used/abused in France as much as it was in Britain at the time? I don't know how greatly the trade links would have made a difference here. I can't remember ever having come across a reference in anything on the Revolution - the Romantic poets in Britain in the 1790's were living on the stuff - but I did wonder if that, rather than the usually assumed bisexuality, may have been Camille Desmoulins' 'vice'?

Comments

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

Well; I don't find anything scandalous in regular drinking.Of course I do not like alcohic people. In Europe, even today, people uses to drink, and heavily, but most of them are not alcoholized. I mean that they are so used to drink that they uses not to be intoxicated by alcoholic beverages. Maybe that was the case about some French Revolution leaders. Of course, our perfect, dear Maxime wouldn't drink so much. Only a glass or two of wine with a lot of water in them. My Hanriot , even if he was not - it seems - the alcoholic of the legend depicts, liked to drink a little, along with friends...It was quite natural at the time. But his favorite drink was not wine; he loved champagne *cough* *cough*...What an aristocratic taste! :D

Yes; laudanum was not seen as a drug back then: you would take it just to cure some physicall illness or at least, to calm them. I don't think they considered it a vice...At the start of XX Century even cocaine was not seen as a bad drug. I have magazines from that time in which there is publicity of medicines made with cocaine.

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

My mother's generation had amphetamine as 'diet pills' and cocaine at the dentist! They still use opium medically a lot - a friend of mine is prescribed opium tablets after operations.
In Britain the drink-driving limits are now very strict - much more strict than in France - and I think that has changed habits so that people now 'binge drink' on a friday or saturday night and pack a week's drinking into a few hours! Then they get a taxi home and spend sunday being sick.

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

Of course, if you get sick after a drinking time, you didn't know how to drink and you are near of being an alcoholist. If you have been drinking and caught a headache, it's better that you stop it.

Yes; I remember the "amphetamine" and diet pills. My aunt wanted to follow a diet and her doctor gave her some pills...She bordered suicide and was so crazy that anyone could speak to her without her becoming extremely angry.

HanriotFran (Vanesa)