Regarding our new liquor laws, let us walk down this new path with great carefulness. The report from OPRF High School every week involves problems with alcohol and drugs. I am a retired counselor and have taken several courses specifically in addiction counseling.
Alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana are called, by researchers, the “gateway drugs.” This means that while not everyone who drinks alcohol goes on to use drugs, everyone who uses drugs began with alcohol, cigarettes and/or marijuana. Requiring servers of alcohol to take a short course in how to identify false IDs is a whisper to our children compared to their seeing us use more and more alcohol.
And soon we might have establishments solely for serving alcohol? “Pubs,” an acceptable word for taverns/bars, are very visible statements to our teens, a new environment. Do we want to become like our neighbors to the west on Madison where every third storefront is a bar?
This is a new road to walk down thoughtfully. If we think, probably most of us know at least one person who has suffered enormously as the child or spouse of an alcoholic. Alcoholics themselves suffer and have ruined their own lives, too. Alcohol is not a plaything. Because of the failure of Prohibition, the historical attempt to totally ban alcohol, we refuse to look in any way at the suffering in this country (and many others) that alcohol brings.
I’d add that a downtown survey of 500 people hardly represents the thoughts of 50,000 busy inhabitants of our village. Those raising children are probably not the ones wandering around downtown. Nor do they have time to write letters to the editor.
I know that Europeans drink alcohol without legal restraints. The countries where that works best are warm and sunny, where life itself is fairly enjoyable. The farther north one goes in Europe, the more alcoholism and drug addiction there is. In other words, misuse of these freedoms is often related to trying to feel good when life is difficult.
We are not a sunny clime. Hopefully, we foster enough healthy ways to lift our spirits and have a good time (e.g. the Farmers Market Band, Unity Temple Coffee House, OP-RF Symphony, Buzz Café, park district classes, etc.)
The “fun” [microbrew] beer fest held this summer is another event I ask people to think about. A “nonprofit” that promotes beer drinking? Is it just me or is there not something strange about this? Moreover, the nonprofit calls itself “Seven Generations,” a takeoff on the Native American approach to decision making, which says that the elders should consider the effects of their decisions on the seventh generation yet to come!
So our wise elders are starting us down this new path promoting alcohol, perhaps to bring more money to the business district. They owe it to the children in Oak Park’s future to sit quietly with this subject and make each decision very, very carefully.
