Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9779719:


Free Greenland 23 7, 8:19am

@Trineff

"although that seems unlikely that no Dane ever brought over a bottle of beer all the way up to world war 2"

It also seems very unlikely that one bottle of beer brought to Greenland would constitute "introducing those social ills" like you talked about.

For that introduction to be made, the ill in question has to be commonly available to a large majority of the population.
Just as tobacco was just a fad of the wealthy elite in Europe before the price dropped to a point where commoners could pick up the habit.

In this case it seems clear that the Danes did deliberately restrict the availability of alcohol to Greenlanders from 1782 - which is a hell of a long time ago.

Now you deliberately cut the quote short, but it ends with the words "although not as much as the Danes".

The text you linked to also goes on to state that rationing was introduced in 1929, and that Danes and Greenlanders working directly for the two specifically named Danish enterprises named in the text you quoted where given preferential treatment.

So, what we have here is a clear policy dating back to 1782 of either completely banning the sale of alcohol (to most Greenlanders) or "only" rationing it (to the few Greenlanders in direct employ of these two Danish enterprises).

Now I can tell you Sweden employed national rationing of alcohol from 1919 until 1955 - and it worked very well in reducing the consumption of alcohol.
And that was in a society that had been awash in hard spirits for centuries.

So I have no doubt that the Danish partial ban and partial rationing system - in place for over 150 years - worked very well in a society that hadn't been exposed to the same abundance of hard spirits.
Which is also backed by the levels of alcohol abuse exploding in Greenland only after the Second World War - not in the centuries before it.

So if @Tzenker's assertions that the Americans lifted all restrictions on the sale of alcohol to Greenlanders during the Second World War is correct, it also seems likely that "much of" the problems with alcoholism on Greenland actually is attributable to that US action.

Not "mostly due to America" like you now falsely claim @Tzenker wrote. But "much of" as he/she did write.

And @Tzenker is clearly not "blaming America first" like you pretend - he/she clearly lists a number of other thing the Danes did wrong as well, so it's not like he/she is trying to blame all of Greenlands problems on the US.

It seems the case is more that you're one of those American "blame America never" types who refuse to admit that your nation ever did anything wrong.