Lush Life

Thanks to a collision between an inept public agency and the world's worst local newspaper, we learned today that the city of Querétaro leads all of Mexico in the category of young female alcoholics!  We're in sixth place in the men's division, and tenth overall in drug consumption, according to the National Council on Addictions. Perhaps we run with an especially puritanical crowd, but we find it very, very difficult to believe that, when it comes to hedonistic drug abuse, this town ranks in the top ten in all of Mexico.  But it's possible that we really do have more young female "alcoholics" than anywhere, since everyone seems to be using "consumption" and "alcoholism" interchangeably.

The Council spokesperson frets that all this un-ladylike drinking will lead to "unwanted pregnancies, STDs, and traffic accidents."  Sensible enough, we suppose.  Then the paper picks up the ball and runs with it.

Currently there are 88,000 single mothers in Querétaro, of which a percentage could be due to queretanas who had sex after ingesting too much alcohol - however, because of the lack of official data,  this cannot be quantified. 

Hey, at least someone's raising the issue.  Next time you see a young woman carrying a baby down the street without a man at her side, feel free to counsel her on her alcoholism.

Meanwhile, we noticed these PSA's in the window of some government building here.

"Querétaro is #3 in alcohol-related driving deaths."

This seems to us a much more reliable statistic that the ones above - but, man, is that one good-looking, delicately-posed, dead drunk driver.  Apparently, we got to be #3 because well-dressed young women are getting wasted and curling up asleep in the middle of the highway, where they then die peacefully from carbon monoxide poisoning.