Iran Military Forum

10 February 2012 Last updated at 03:07 GMT

US tribe sues beer makers for $500m over alcohol abuse

An American-Indian tribe in South Dakota has sued some of the world's biggest beer firms over severe alcohol-related issues in the community.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe are asking for $500m (£316m) for healthcare, social services and child rehabilitation.

Tribal elders say the lawsuit is a last resort after efforts to curb abuse through protests and policy failed.

On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation one in four children suffers foetal disorders caused by alcohol abuse.

The lawsuit, filed in the district court of Nebraska, targets Anheuser-Busch InBev Worldwide, SAB Miller, Molson Coors Brewing Company, MillerCoors LLC, and Pabst Brewing Company.

There was no immediate response from those firms.

The lawsuit also names the nearby town of Whiteclay, Nebraska, which has four beer shops that sold nearly five million beer cans in 2010 despite having only about a dozen residents.

Alcohol is outlawed on the reservation and the nearest town which allows alcohol is 20 miles (32km) away, Mark Vasina, president of Nebraskans for Peace, told the Associated Press news agency.

The lawsuit alleges that beer makers and the shop owners knew the alcohol would be smuggled into the reservation for consumption or resale.

The legal documents allege: "The illegal sale and trade in alcohol in Whiteclay is open, notorious and well documented by news reports, legislative hearings, movies, public protests and law enforcement activities."

Meanwhile, Tom White, the lawyer representing the tribe, told the Associated Press news agency: "You cannot sell 4.9 million 12oz [356ml] cans of beer and wash your hands like Pontius Pilate, and say we've got nothing to do with it being smuggled."
 
The town of Whiteclay, Nebraska, has four beer shops

The reservation has grappled with alcohol problems and poverty for generations, and the tribal council has said it hopes the case will help protect the community's youth.

"Like American parents everywhere, we will do everything lawful we can to protect the health, welfare and future of our children," Tribal President John Yellow Bird Steele told the Associated Press news agency.

The reservation, which is about the size of the state of Connecticut, includes Shannon County, the third poorest county in the US.

The median income in the area is $27,300 and almost half of the population is considered to be living below federal poverty standards.

The life expectancy in the community is between 45 and 52 years - the lowest in North America except Haiti - and far below the national average of 77.5 years.

Nebraska State Senator LeRoy Louden has said that after struggling with the problem for years, the state has introduced legislation that would impose restrictions - on the types of alcohol that can be sold and business hours.

The tolerance to alcohol is not equally distributed throughout the world's population, and genetics of alcohol dehydrogenase indicate resistance has arisen independently in different ethnic groups.[2] People of European descent on average have a high alcohol tolerance and are less likely to develop alcoholism compared to Aboriginal Australians, Native Americans and some East Asian groups.[3][4][5] This is related to an average higher body mass, but also to the prevalence of high levels of alcohol dehydrogenase in the population.[6][7] The high alcohol tolerance in Europeans and some other ethnic groups has probably evolved as a consequence of centuries of exposure to alcohol in established agricultural societies.[8][2]

Not all differences in tolerance can be traced to biochemistry.[9] Differences in tolerance levels are also influenced by socio-economic and cultural difference including diet, average body weight and patterns of consumption.[10][11]

An estimated one out of three people in East Asian countries have an alcohol flush reaction, colloquially known as "Asian Glow", a condition where the body cannot break down ingested alcohol completely because it lacks the genetically coded enzyme that performs this function in the bodies of drinkers with "European" tolerance levels.[12] Flushing, or blushing, is associated with the erythema (reddening caused by dilation of capillaries) of the face, neck, and shoulder, after consumption of alcohol.[12]

Rouz hit the nail on the head.

What comes now is purely my speculation, however: I suspect building a tolerance to alcoholic beverages was much like building tolerance to consuming wheat or dairy products.
AKA at some point in history, a bottleneck event occured where food was extremely scarce, and those who were able to sttomach lactose, for example had an extra food supply, and those who couldn't stomach it passed away long before the advent of modern medicine or food production could keep them alive if they were lacking that trait in a particularly dire situation aka famine. Over generations, this gradual shift in reproductive dynamics resulted in modern human populations where rates of lactose intolerance are much higher in populations from east asia and the americas, who have not been exposed to dairy products nearly as long, relatively speaking, as many populations from the middle east and europe and also Africa. In contrast, in the distant past at one time virtually no human populations would have been able to stomach it because the human GI system was never selected for such a task (drinking another animal's milk and growing wheat is not something any animal, including humans until about 10k BC, did in the wild).

Now, it may not be the case that beer was popular as a source of calories in times of famine in certain populations. But perhaps the same principle applies, where those civilizations that have been exposed to alcohol for many more generations into the past of the history of human civilization have built up a tolerance to it because with each generation of exposure a certain number of heavy drinkers who couldn't hold the alcohol well would have died prematurely, or become drunkards whose children died from neglect, or nobody wanted children with.

mamdali:
- For those interested in these subjects and various opposing view points, consider reading the works of Steve Pinker, -

If by Stephen Pinker you're referring to the MIT professor of neuroscience, I do like reading his ideas.

I mostly read him for the cognitive linguistics and neuroscience aspect, but you're right, he does say a lot about evolutionary / biological based psychology / behavioral tendencies which I also find to be interesting because I see Islamic law as realistically addressing much of the natural biological based tendencies that humans naturally have, as opposed to Western systems which are based on views of human nature which are not realistic.

So far I've read his first book "The Language Instinct" and I'm starting his second book, "How the Mind Works."

Daniel Dennett may be another person to add to your list of theorists of biological psychology, though I haven't read enough of his ideas to say that with certainty.

Alcohol tolerance and the likelihood of developing an addiction