What, I can't buy beer?

Just today I heard on some news that there was some research done which indicated that booze has been part of Finnish culture since times unknown, curiously including sermons at churches, and also current government has been fighting this equally long time. Kinda explains some things. Text below has been in my queue for some time now, so guess I'll just publish this now.

Sometimes the laws regarding alcohol here (Finland) feel somewhat puritan.

It used to be that you couldn't buy any alcohol (including beer) from shops (bars and such naturally were exempt) past 9 PM, until the next morning. This I didn't mind too much, really. But then this law was made stricter - you couldn't buy alcohol until 9 AM. Apparently idea was that the (small number of) heavy users couldn't get their refill first time at a morning.

Several years ago I was staying at a hotel at Turku due to a trade fair, exact details escape me. When having breakfast (around maybe 7:30 to 8 AM) I noticed that there were two German men at the next table. They apparently wanted to have beers for breakfast. Waiter told them that no can do, they can't serve alcohol until 9 AM (I haven't read the actual text of this law so I don't know if it actually applies to hotel restaurants serving breakfast, but they at least interpreted it so). As you could guess, there two German gentlemen were very confused about such laws.

I don't remember if this was before or after above, but my wife worked night shifts at one point. At one day I picked her up from work (around 7 AM -- you might already guess where this is going...) and before I dropped her off to home and went to work myself we went to a shop to get some groceries. What we bought doesn't really matter, usual foodstuffs, but I do remember being somewhat annoyed that I couldn't grab few cans of beer with me to be enjoyed on evening (since this was before 9 AM). Yeah, like the gentlemen above, I am not a fan of this completely retarded law either.

In Finland these laws aren't officially based on morality (read: hypocrisy) like in some other places, but on citizens' health (repeat: officially so). For same reason taxes on alcohol are very high, and some people in high places (including some batshit crazy religions ones) want to still raise alcohol taxes even higher.
 
Now, this taxation idea is forgetting one very very important detail. Finland is member of European Union these days. As is Estonia, our southern neighboring country across a small sea. And Estonia is much cheaper country than Finland. And there is this thing called free movement of goods in EU region.

There are ferries that travel between Helsinki (capital of Finland) and Tallinn (capital of Estonia) several times a day and roundtrip tickets are fairly cheap. So what happens is that people hop in a ferry, buy loads of alcohol in Estonia, then come back with loads of beer and other beverages, with total cost way lower than if they had bought same amount in Finland.

So what actually happened is that government here, in its infinite wisdom (yes, you can assume text here to be extremely sarcasm-heavy) has managed, by stubbornly refusing to acknowledge facts, to retain all high medical costs of heavy alcohol use while at same time losing tax income by making it cheaper for people to travel to neighboring country to buy their booze. Booze that quite often happens to be brewed by a Finnish brewery, in Finland and exported there.

Good job there, government. Absolutely brilliant.

But wait, it isn't over yet - some geniuses have proposed that all (retail) alcohol sales should be forbidden on sundays. Fortunately that hasn't come to pass, at least not yet, as I predict that such law would only increase alcohol usage. Want to guess why?