The Drink Question: The political history of liquor regulation in Canada

In this podcast episode, Simon Nantais speaks with Dan Malleck about his book, Liquor and the Liberal State: Drink and Order before Prohibition published by UBC Press in 2022. The book explores the history of liquor regulation in Ontario in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Malleck discusses how notions of individual freedom, equality, and property rights were debated, challenged, and modified in response to an active prohibitionist movement and equally active liquor industry. This book helps to demonstrate the challenges governments faced when dealing with alcoholic beverages, particularly within the conceptual framework of liberalism. Dan Malleck is a professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University and the director of Brock’s Centre for Canadian Studies. He was the editor-in-chief of the journal Social History of Alcohol and Drugs. He is a medical historian specializing in drug and alcohol regulation and policy. His books include Try to Control Yourself: The regulation of public drinking in post-prohibition Ontario and When Good Drugs go Bad: Opium, medicine, and the origins of Canada’s drug laws. He is also the co-editor, with Cheryl Warsh, of Pleasure and Panic: New Essays on the history of alcohol and drugs and the editor of the four-volume primary source collection Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction in the Long Nineteenth Century. He contributes to current discussions on cannabis legalization, the opioid crisis, liquor laws, and drinking policy using historically grounded analysis to provide insight into current issues. This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt. If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.