Free Republic

Afghan clerics seek return of anti-alcohol police By Our Foreign Staff (Filed: 18/07/2006) Afghan police have destroyed 3,000 cans of beer and 630 bottles of alcohol confiscated from foreign "guest houses" in the capital Kabul during a recent crackdown. The alcohol, which is banned in Islamic Afghanistan, was seized in raids on guest houses during which seven foreign women were arrested on charges of prostitution. The interior ministry said they would be deported. The raids were part of a government campaign against alcohol. Although alcohol is banned in Afghanistan, expatriates living there can buy it in certain shops, where they...

America’s anti-alcohol movement is composed of dozens of overlapping community groups, research institutions, and advocacy organizations, but they are brought together and given direction by one entity: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Based in Princeton, New Jersey, the RWJF has spent more than $265 million between 1997 and 2002 to tax, vilify, and restrict access to alcoholic beverages. Nearly every study disparaging alcohol in the mass media, every legislative push to limit marketing or increase taxes, and every supposedly “grassroots” anti-alcohol movement was conceived and coordinated at the RWJF’s headquarters. Thanks to this one foundation, the U.S. anti-alcohol movement...