Why I Drink Rye Whisky but Won't Touch Aspartame

Set in two futures at roughly 1982 and 2032 as imagined from 1959, H. Beam Piper's short science fiction story Hunter Patrol is still very much worth reading.  What's it about?  A side skirmish of WW-IV, time travel, and a forgetful dictator who keeps the population in check via a psychoactive soft drink.  Also, the protagonist keeps a sixth of rye at hand to aid his after-hours research.  Two thoughts: (a) pfft, chemists, what can you do with them, and (b) wait, a sixth of rye?  I guess shrinkflation afflicts even denizens of alternate timelines.

I hadn't read this story in over forty years, since right when it was re-issued in the early Eighties, and right before nutrasweet hit the market.  Seemed like a bad idea at the time, seems even worse as the years have passed.  I have to say though, for all the bizarre twists of that now mostly-passed fictional future, it is in many ways considerably less strange that what has actually come to pass.

The short story's still in print in paper, e-book, or audiobook forms.  Perhaps best of all, it's in a Piper "Megapack"e-reader anthology for a buck.  Dig around in all the usual places.

BTW, the illustration has absolutely nothing to do with the story.  It appears to have been lifted from a cover of a pulp magazine where the story made an early appearance.  A lurid eye-grabber there and then as well as here and now, and presented for all the same reasons.