Brews You Can Use
This is one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile, even though I can't imagine I'd ever buy it: Palcohol (powdered alcohol).
Of course the neo-Prohibitionists' radars are going bonkers, and states have used their powers under the 10th and 21st Amendments to ban it. The rationale? The same bogeyman they always use: It could lead to more underage drinking. The FDA earlier approved it, but it appears it subsequently disapproved it.
The self-righteous pediatrician at the above link condemns the products because, "It's one thing to police for cases of beer, but these packets are easily hidden" (rough quote). Of course, he doesn't address the many other ways for kids to hide alcohol: bottles that are smaller than these packets, absorbing alcohol through the rectum, swiping beer from their parents' fridge when they're at work. (Aside: When did we start needing a pediatrician to comment on teenage drinking? And what self-respecting teenager still sees a "pediatrician"? I realize pediatricians deal with adolescents, but not self-respecting ones.)
Albert Jay Nock once observed, "Nature runs so easily to alcohol that it is one of the cheapest products in the world. If the government did not tax alcohol and kept its hands off it entirely, letting it be sold everywhere as freely as peanuts, it would be so cheap that nobody could afford to a saloon." A Journal of These Days, June 18, 1932.
As I get older and my wild drinking days recede more and more into the past, one thing gets clearer and clearer to me: alcohol abuse is primarily the result of government interference. If the government simply backed off and let nature run its course, alcohol would fade into the landscape and not be much more noticeable than the average shrub in your neighborhood. Sure, there would still be ugly shrubs that need pruning by the homeowner (abstaining), and occasionally a shrub could get so out of control that the local authorities might have to come out and tell the homeowner to trim it or remove it (the loud drunk on the street), but overall, it simply wouldn't be a big deal, whether in liquid or powdered form.
