Trends have moved a long way since the Victorian era, when the prevalence of gin palaces and ale houses for the poor were a social problem. Karl Marx noted that drink was the curse of the working classes, an observation that Oscar Wilde famously inverted. The Quaker philanthropists Joseph Rowntree and John Cadbury began selling drinking chocolate and cocoa as alternatives to ubiquitous supplies of cheap alcohol. Now the wheel has come full circle. The poor are the least likely to drink alcohol and the highest earners the most likely.

Source: The Times May 01, 2018 16:07 UTC