Résumé :
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[BDSP. Notice produite par INIST y7XR0x3t. Diffusion soumise à autorisation]. The "gin epidemic" of 1720 to 1751 in Engiand was the first time that government intervened in a systematic fashion to regulate and control sales of alcohol. The epidemic therefore provides an opportunity to gauge the effects of multiple legisiative interventions over time. Toward that end, we employed time series analysis in conjunction with qualitative methodologies to test the interplay of multiple independent variables, inciuding real wages and 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 enforcement at the local level, and that in each instance consumption actually increased shortly thereafter. This was true even of the Gin Aet of 1751, which, contrary to the assumptions of contemporaries and many historians, succeeded by accident rather than by design. The results also suggest that the epidemic followed the inverse U-shaped trajectory of more recent drug scares and that consumption declined only after the more deleterious effects of distilled spirits had been experienced by large numbers of people.
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