A study in prohibition: Why world cup fans will be even drunker.

FIFA officials sold the World Cup and their own children to Qatar in a shameless orgy of corruption that would be hilarious if it didn’t come on the backs of dead migrant workers.

In a stunning upset, Qatar yanked permission for beer sales in stadiums 48 hours before the first game—just enough time for fans to not cancel their trips. To outgun the alcohol industry in moral bankruptcy is no small feat, but it looks like FIFA and Qatari royals did it.

Some reactions were censorious. “If you can’t go to a World Cup game without a beer, you might have a problem,” Stephen King said on Twitter. But mostly, fans are pissed. Brian Davidson, the first fan in Qatar to drink an official World Cup beer said: ‘I’m devastated, it doesn't make sense. What's wrong with having a beer at a match?” the Daily Mail reported.

German fan Daniel Schwestka, 30, from Dusseldorf, said: ‘Football without beer is not football.’ He added: ‘I go to many matches even in the third German leagues, and you can have a beer. It is normal to drink beer at football and this is the World Cup.

‘When I arrived in Doha yesterday, I had two bottles of whiskey, my luggage and they took it from me at the airport.

‘I knew it was going be difficult to drink here. But how can they ban beer at the actual stadiums. It is ridiculous.' 

The eternal wrath of sober soccer hooligans is exactly what FIFA officials deserve. But the thing is, they probably won’t be sober. Schwestka is not the only World Cup fan who thought about sneaking whiskey in. And while he was caught, they can’t catch everyone. Plus, if officials gather like a million whiskey bottles, you can bet that some of it will find its way into some kind of black market.

Although I like it a lot, I agree with Zach and Stephen King that alcohol is one of the worst drugs. Not only is excessive consumption unhealthy, it worsens anti-social behaviors, from reckless driving to domestic violence to riots at soccer games. Although many other drugs are more dangerous to your own health, no drug causes as much damage to other people.

But if you’re trying to mitigate alcohol’s social harms, prohibition is the worst way to do it (this is a separate issue from the right of Qatari officials to expect foreigners to respect local religious customs). If Qatari officials had allowed beer sales you’d have looooong lines for a $12 cup of piss-beer Budweiser. Human ingenuity can only stretch so far under these circumstances—at most fans can buy and carry three beers at a time. Some people would probably smuggle whiskey in but most people will probably make due with beer.

But now, probably way more people will try to smuggle alcohol in. In accordance with the law of black markets, that alcohol won’t be Budweiser, it’ll be whiskey: you want to get most bang for your buck with the smallest, least detectable amount. It’s why whiskey, not beer, was the booze of choice in America’s speakeasies during prohibition. You see a similar trajectory in the US opioid crisis. Pills became heroin which became fentanyl: the most potent (and deadly) high in the smallest dose.