Iceland’s alcohol rules measure the wrong thing

In a submitted article published by Morgunblaðið, Arnar Sigurðsson argues that Iceland’s alcohol regulations are being assessed using the wrong standards, while the state avoids addressing how the system has changed.

An old parable tells of a road crew clearing a path through a jungle. The workers are dedicated, the project managers sharpen their machetes and write procedures, and the planners measure productivity and publish reports on the number of metres cleared each day.

Everyone is busy and everyone is performing well. Then someone climbs to the top of the tallest tree, looks out and calls down: “Wrong forest.”

85 per cent measures productivity in the wrong forest

When Iceland negotiated an exemption from the European Economic Area agreement concerning alcohol sales, the forest was very different. There were nine shops. They did not accept payment cards, and they closed at 4pm. That system could, with some goodwill, be described as restricting access.

Today there are 52 shops, open until 6pm on Saturdays and 8pm on Fridays. The exemption granted to restrict access has been used to build what is now the world’s densest network of alcohol shops per capita, the article argues.

What is the measure of the public health role? The target is that 85 per cent of people who should show identification are asked to do so. The figure is based on staff members’ random assessments, with a built-in margin of error of 15 per cent defined as acceptable performance.

“ÁTVR has no legal obligations concerning prevention,” the article quotes from the organisation’s autobiography, on page 355.

Meanwhile, online shops use electronic identification. There, the margin of error is zero, not because the staff are better but because the machine asks every time.

This is exactly like the road crew. The machetes are sharpened, the metres are counted and the reports are issued. But no one has climbed the tree to check whether the work is heading in the right direction.

A lawsuit is not a policy

Online shops have operated openly in Iceland for almost five years. Instead of asking what that fact says about the law, the state has chosen to prosecute them.

That is not a decision. It is postponement dressed up as a decision. When the law and reality have disagreed for five years, there is no need to ask which one is right.

There are plenty of skilled speakers in parliament who can talk about the issue for 20 minutes without saying what they intend to do. But a leader is something different from a good speaker. A leader is someone willing to climb the tree, endure the view and say clearly what everyone knows but no one wants to be the first to say: the premises have collapsed.

That comes at a cost. The person who climbs the tree is not clearing any metres that day and performs poorly in the productivity report.

Fearing self-determination means fearing ourselves

Opposition to change is rarely expressed as distrust. It is expressed as concern. But on closer inspection, the core is this: we do not trust adults to choose.

We trust the same people with the right to vote, raising children, driving a two-tonne car on the Ring Road and taking out a 40-year mortgage. We trust them to decide what they eat, whom they marry and which religion they follow. But not to choose a bottle of red wine online.

There is no coherent view of humanity behind this. It is habitual thinking that has survived because it has never been required to defend itself.

Self-determination naturally brings responsibility. That is not a flaw but its substance. Freedom without responsibility is not freedom but childishness, while responsibility without freedom is not responsibility but obedience. Neither is desirable. A mature society is built on people being allowed to choose and bear the consequences.