Paris has banned street sales of alcohol, starting Friday, June 26th in response to the ongoing heatwave. The decision aims to reduce pressure on hospitals and ambulance services. Paris police chief Patrice Faure told BFM TV
drinking alcohol with the sun beating down can have a devastating effect.
Hence a ban on buying beer, wine, and spirits from shops to drink in the street, beside the city’s canals, and by the Seine. It will run until 7 a.m. on Saturday, June 26th and restart from noon on Saturday until 7a.m. on Sunday.
The popular Paris Pride event has been postponed until September, while the Solidays music festival has been cancelled. The first day of the ban, which also targets street-drinking, is designed to prevent the World Cup’s France-Norway game becoming a flashpoint demanding official crisis management.
Of France’s 67 million total population, more than 44 million people are now residing under conditions of the highest red alert for heat (based on temperatures of close to 40°C). However, aside from relegating personal conduct, the government seems weak in its response. Temporarily, nuclear power has gone the way of Parisian street drinking, with output reduced since Wednesday. The official rationale is to reduce water consumption, which is used to cool reactors—reducing, in turn, midday power consumption by 4.1 gigawatts, or 7% (according to provider EDF).
Cutting power consumption in a crisis would be harder to justify if not for the increasingly bizarre efforts to present vital air conditioning technology as ‘far right.’
