Even the Spectator appears to be forward of the French authorities in understanding this!
throughout France this Easter, households collect to eat, drink and, in lots of instances, smoke medication. There are 5 million common hashish people who smoke in France and one other 600,000 who’re categorized as cocaine addicts.
The quantity of people that eat wine often is simply over seven million (11 p.c of the inhabitants), a determine that has been in free fall this century.
Within the final 60 years, wine consumption has fallen in France, from 120 liters per particular person per yr in 1960 to lower than 40 liters in 2020. The beret and the string of onions across the neck was nonetheless a Anglo-Saxon stereotype about our neighbors. however not so his love of wine. Whereas we Brits had been nursing our pints of stout or bitter, the French had been uncorking a bottle of crimson.
The facility and wealth of the drug cartels in France has elevated
No extra. Within the final ten years, the variety of common wine drinkers has fallen by 32 p.c, leading to brutal ramifications for main distributors. The sale of Bordeaux wines has fallen by 35 p.c within the final decade, whereas it’s 31 p.c for Côtes-du-Rhône and 29 p.c for Pays d'Oc reds.
Champagne additionally went flat. In 2023, there was a 20 p.c drop in gross sales, though this was partly attributable to a value improve, averaging 10 to 12 p.c per bottle.
However the decline in wine consumption is a cultural phenomenon that, in response to one of many main French sociologists, Jerome Fourquet, has had dramatic social and financial penalties. In his 2019 ebook, The French archipelago, Fourquet famous that France's largest wine area, Languedoc-Roussillon, has misplaced 43 p.c of its manufacturing space since 1975 because of declining demand for wine. The variety of wine cooperatives has fallen from 550 within the Nineteen Seventies to 200 in 2012. As soon as cooperatives had been on the coronary heart of communities, together with the church and the rugby membership.
It's a decline that reveals no signal of abating. In an interview final October Denis Verdier, the president of a wine federation in Languedoc-Roussillon, stated: “The disaster is right here, however we is not going to hand over … we should and we are going to innovate.”
It's simpler stated than performed when a rising proportion of the inhabitants doesn't drink alcohol. Final yr, this determine was virtually one in 5 (19 p.c), a rise of 4 share factors from 2015.
The change in France is undoubtedly influenced by immigration this century and the rising variety of Muslims. In 1950, for instance, there have been 230,000 Muslims in France; seventy years later they’re 6,635,327.
That is additionally a major issue within the rise of hashish because the drug of selection for younger French folks.
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https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-french-want-weed-not-wine/
