one for the road
Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2003 8:07 pm
PARIS - France's wine industry wants drivers to know: It's OK to have a drink for the road. Or three. The $18 billion-a-year wine industry is fighting back against a government campaign to discourage drunken driving.
It claims the government is scaring people away from ordering a glass when they go out and points to a 15 percent drop in wine sales at restaurants.
"People are so afraid of the police these days that they're not drinking any wine at all," Pascal Bobillier-Monnot, director of CNAOC national wine producers' association, said Friday.
Wine makers have always promoted moderate drinking to comply with the country's blood-alcohol limit of .05. But they say the government is overreacting when it tells drivers that the safest way to stay out of trouble is not to drink at all.
It claims the government is scaring people away from ordering a glass when they go out and points to a 15 percent drop in wine sales at restaurants.
"People are so afraid of the police these days that they're not drinking any wine at all," Pascal Bobillier-Monnot, director of CNAOC national wine producers' association, said Friday.
Wine makers have always promoted moderate drinking to comply with the country's blood-alcohol limit of .05. But they say the government is overreacting when it tells drivers that the safest way to stay out of trouble is not to drink at all.