Alcohol in Japan file://///server/media/Old%20Text/Web%20Pages/Alcohol%20in%20Jap...

Alcohol in Japan
See also:
Nicotine (Tobacco), Amphetamines (Speed), Caffeine (Coffee).
Hemp as a "drug"
Drug risks: How dangerous are the most common drugs?

Alcohol is widely used in Japan. About 70% of all alcohol is consumed as beer, with the
remainder used in the form of sake (rice wine), shochu, wine, fruit wines and spirits. Grapes
were introduced by the Portuguese about 400 years ago because wine was needed for
sacramental purposes by Christians. Beer only arrived in Japan about 100 years ago but has
become by far the most popular alcoholic beverage.

Hops and Hemp

We all know that beer is made from water and malts. There is an important third
ingredient, hops, which acts as a preservative and as flavouring (it's responsible for the
bitter taste in beers). Hops also contains a slightly psychoactive substance, lupulin.
Few beer drinkers know that amongst all plants the closest relative of hops is cannabis
hemp, marijuana. Most domestic Japanese hops is grown in Hokkaido, the Tohoku
region or Nagano. All of these are former hemp growing areas, since both plants thrive
in a similar environment.

In the United States and in Germany, beers are brewed from crushed hemp seeds.
They have a nutty taste and full flavour. The hemp seeds do not act as an intoxicant,
only the alcohol.

In Japanese society alcohol serves an important function as a release valve for social
pressures. Many business negotiations are conducted in bars and restaurants under the
influence of alcohol. Getting drunk can be an integral part of one's career path. It can be
difficult to avoid alcohol altogether and often there is pressure to drink to join a group.

Alcohol and women

Drinking used to be pretty much a male domain in Japan, but now sales of alcohol to men are
so saturated that recent adds for plum wine and beer are specifically targeting young women.
And there are a few young ladies around that go through a couple of bottles of wine a week.
When they have babies they really have to change their habits or the babies may suffer from
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The baby might be mentally retardated. Alcohol should be avoided
during pregnancy.

Alcohol is tolerated
Public drunkenness amongst men, especially late at night, is quite common (and unlike in the
USA, legal) though unlike many other countries it is not often related to violence. There is no
great embarassment involved in being seen drunk by other people, so as long as you don't
make a fool of yourself all the time. You have to be a pretty hard drinker before people treat

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you as a nuisance.

What age limit?

Like cigarettes alcohol is available from outdoors vending machines that perform no age
verification, so the legal barriers against under-age drinking are somewhat theoretical.

The problem drinkers

While most people who drink alcohol do so in moderation and without doing any damage to
their health, a minority of alcohol users does get addicted. It is estimated that there are
several million Japanese with a serious alcohol problem. The health damage from excessive
alcohol use is largely ignored by Japanese society.

Organic damage
Habituation to heavy drinking is very harmful, as alcohol is a relatively toxic drug when used
in higher doses. A blood alcohol level of about 0.4% is lethal. An adult can reach it by
drinking from about 300 ml of pure alcohol (100%), equivalent to 0.75 l of spirits (40%), 2 l
of wine or sake (15% ) or 6 l of beer (5%). Immoderate alcohol use causes damage to most
internal organs including the liver, the stomach, bladder, the nervous system and the brain. It
also corelates with higher cancer rates, though that does not necessary mean that alcohol
causes cancer. It can cause Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in unborn babies of pregnant drinkers.

Alcohol and solvents

The only other group of intoxicant drugs that is so clearly linked to brain damage as alcohol
are the solvents (acetone, toluene, etc. in glue, nail varnish remover, etc.). This is not
surprising since alcohol (ethanol) and its metabolites in the liver are all substances that are
used as solvents in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. When alcohol is broken down
in the liver it turns into a toxic substance that has the same effect as inhaled solvents. Chronic
alcohol abuse is the major source of liver disease.

Accidents
Especially during the year-end season the police gets very active catching drunk drivers.
Alcohol affects the ability to operate machinery and operate motor vehicles quite seriously,
more so than most illegal recreational substances do. It is involved in approximately 4000
traffic deaths a year in Japan, almost half of all traffic accident deaths in the country.

Withdrawal symptoms
One measure of addictiveness of a drug is the severity of withdrawal symptoms when drug
use is stopped. By that measure alcohol can be quite addictive. If alcohol use is very heavy
for an extended period then physical addiction, a serious medical condition, occurs. Sudden
withdrawal of alcohol in an addict can produce physical withdrawal symptoms so severe as to
be life-threatening. If the addict is not given either alcohol or valium he may die. Few other
drugs, legal or otherwise, lead to life-threatening withdrawal symptoms. Sudden abstinence
from marijuana, even after long term heavy use does not lead to any physical withdrawal
symptoms.

Alcoholism and Smoking are our biggest drug problems

Talking about drug problems but excluding alcohol and tobacco is like talking about oceans

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but ignoring the Atlantic and the Pacific. Alcohol abuse is probably the second worst
drug-related health problem after tobacco, in terms of disease it causes and premature deaths.

Of course with alcohol there are "drug overdoses" too:

"Hanami" merrymakers hit by alcohol poisoning

"Cannabis or alcohol? Observations on their use in Jamaica"

UNDCP Bulletin on Narcotics, 1972, Issue 1, Page 2:

One of the striking features of the patient population of Bellevue, the

large mental hospital in Kingston, Jamaica, is the infrequency of
disturbances associated with alcohol. Of 600 admissions to one typical
ward over a two-year period, less than 2 % suffered such problems; not a
single case of chronic brain syndrome associated with alcoholism was
seen and we encountered neither delirium tremens nor alcoholic
hallucinosis. The few alcohol-linked disturbances that did occur were,
moreover, in patients who contrasted sharply with the predominantly
low-income ward population in that they were from higher income levels
or were highly acculturated, having spent several years in England or the
United States or Canada.

This picture is unexpected first because in Jamaica, a major sugar

producing country, rum is relatively cheap; and second, because it is in
marked contrast with what we know of most other Caribbean islands. For
example, annual returns indicate some 47% of admissions to mental
hospital in Nassau and 53% in Martinique are alcohol-linked [1] . Murphy
and Sam-path [6] found 50% of admissions in St. Thomas (to general
hospital psychiatric unit in an area without a mental hospital) were related
to alcohol use. These figures may be compared to Chafetz's [3] estimate
of 30% alcohol-linked admissions to American mental hospitals and 40 %
to mental hospitals in Santiago, Chile [4] .

Although many of these statistics are approximate, such a gross contrast

with Jamaica's 2 % of alcohol-linked admissions calls for some attempt at
explanation. The hypothesis we wish to explore here is one that has
already been hinted at by Beaubrun [2] . In his pioneer field survey of
alcohol consumption in five Kingston suburbs, he found that heavy
drinking was more prevalent in higher income groups. He suggested that
for low-income groups "... ganja (marihuana) smoking is widespread ...
and may play a role as an alcohol substitute."

Our hypothesis is that the use of ganja as a euphoriant by low-income

Jamaicans is a benevolent alternative to alcohol and may protect
them against the consequences of' alcohol consumption-alcohol
addiction, delirium tremens, chronic brain syndromes, Korsakoff
psychosis and physical sequelae such as cirrhosis of the liver.

[...]
To return to the comparison of hospitalized men with their neighbours in

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the community, it will be recalled that the percentage of heavy ganja

users at large was, if anything, higher than the percentage of ganja users
on the ward. This finding would support our opinion that ganja use is not
a significant cause of psychosis. The so called "ganja psychosis" is
schizophrenia occurring in a ganja-using population.

[...]
In general this study supports the view that ganja is used as an alternative
to alcohol by low income Jamaicans. Whether it is a "benevolent"
alternative is less clear: we found no evidence however that ganja was an
important cause of mental hospitalization.
"Cannabis or alcohol? Observations on their use in Jamaica"
M.D. Raymond PRINCE, M.Ed Rochelle GREENFIELD M.D John MARRIOTT
UNDCP Bulletin on Narcotics, 1972, Issue 1, Page 2

"The Cannabis Habit"

UNDCP Bulletin on Narcotics, 1963, Issue 1:

"In this light it is clear that the free availability of cannabis can be
harmful, but it is not so clear that this is more harmful than the free
availability of alcohol. The question arises, therefore, why cannabis is
so regularly banned in countries where alcohol is permitted. One
reason may be that, having little direct experience with the drug and
hearing the alarming picture reported from countries such as Egypt, these
other countries have decided simply to be on the safe side. Another
reason may be that the causes of cannabis habituation are confused with
its effects. A third reason may be that, because few other pleasures are
available to a mass of the people in certain countries, recourse to
cannabis there follows the disastrous pattern of the recourse to alcohol in
eighteenth-century Britain. One cannot read Benabud's sympathetic
description of the Moroccan urban proletariat without realizing that life
offers such people very few inducements not to drown themselves in a
cannabis illusion. However, there is yet another reason why, I think,
alcohol is tolerated in Anglo-Saxon countries while cannabis is feared. It
derives from the work ethic of Protestantism and its hostility towards
inaction. In India, cannabis can be tolerated and even used by the
Brahmin priesthood because social inaction can have a positive
connotation, whereas alcohol, with its potential release of repressed
impulses, is disapproved of as a disturber and distracter. In Anglo-Saxon
cultures inaction is looked down on and often feared, whereas
over-activity, aided by alcohol or independently of alcohol, is
considerably tolerated despite the social disturbance produced. It may be
that we can ban cannabis simply because the people who use it, or
would do so, carry little weight in social matters and are relatively
easy to control, whereas the alcohol user often carries plenty of
weight in social matters and is difficult to control, as the U.S.
prohibition era showed. It has yet to be shown, however, that the one
is more socially or personally disruptive than the other."

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"The Cannabis Habit",

Ph. D. H.B.M MURPHY, M.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal.
Bulletin on Narcotics, 1963, Issue 1

See also:
Nicotine (Tobacco), Amphetamines (Speed), Caffeine (Coffee).
Hemp as a "drug"
Drug risks: How dangerous are the most common drugs?

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