Britain went through the same sort of moral panic 300 years ago when the ‘gin craze’ hit the streets.

Evidence

Binge drink panic mirrors Hogarth’s ‘gin craze’ (The Guardian)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: Folktales can escalate into moral panics in troubled times. — Lynley Hood, A City Possessed, 77; The Gin Craze was a moral panic about working-class women drinking gin. — Gin Craze: the moral panic about ‘mother’s ruin’ still demonises women

Related

• The Gin Craze was a moral panic about working-class women drinking gin. (similarity 0.93)
• The Gin Craze of the eighteenth century became the focal point for a wide range of only marginally-related social anxieties, transforming a problem into a crisis. (similarity 0.88)
• The Gin Craze was a social, economic and political crisis intensified by underlying cultural anxieties concerning both gender and poverty. (similarity 0.86)
• Gin joints allowed women to drink alongside men for the first time, leading many to child neglect and prostitution. (similarity 0.86)