Can legislation prevent debauchery? Mother gin and public health in 18th-century England

The "gin epidemic" of 1720 to 1751 in England was the first time that gover nment intervened in a systematic fashion to regulate and control sales of a lcohol. The epidemic therefore provides an opportunity to gauge the effects of multiple legislative interventions over time. Toward that end, we emplo yed time series analysis in conjunction with qualitative methodologies to t est the interplay of multiple independent variables, including real wages a nd taxes, on the consumption of distilled spirits from 1700 through 1771. The results showed that each of the 3 major gin acts was successful in the short term only, consistent with the state's limited resources for enforcem ent at the local level, and that in each instance consumption-actually incr eased shortly thereafter. This was true even of the Gin Act of 1751,which, contrary to the assumptions of contemporaries and many historians, succeede d by accident rather than by design. The results also suggest that the epid emic followed the inverse -U-shaped trajectory of more recent drug scares a nd that consumption declined only after the more deleterious effects of dis tilled spirits had been experienced by large numbers of people.