Ethicist: People who avoid alcoholic beverages simply because they regard them as a luxury beyond their financial means should not be praised for their abstinence
Similarly, those who avoid alcohol simply because they lack the desire to partake should not be praised, unless this disinclination has somehow resulted from an arduous process of disciplining oneself to refrain from acting indiscriminately on one' s desires
A person is praiseworthy for a particular behavior only if, in order to adopt that behavior, the person at some point had to overcome a desire to do something that she or he felt able to afford to do.