LOOKING FORWARD TO 2017

In terms of the ongoing culture war in relation to alcohol, there have been three signal developments over the past 12 months that I think will reverberate over the course of 2017. They are: the development, and publication in January this year, of the UK CMOs’ new, ‘low risk’ drinking guidelines; the establishment of the House of Lords all-party committee inquiring into the Licensing Act 2003; and the decision by the Scottish Inner Court of Sessions that minimum unit pricing (MUP) is, after all, lawful – a decision which the Scotch whisky association (SWA) has now announced it will appeal to the Supreme Court in London.

Let’s take a look at each of these in turn, and what the likely developments mean for the trade in beverage alcohol:

The ‘low-risk’ guidelines

The real significance of the new alcohol drinking guidelines is not that they set a new, low-risk level of 14 units a week alcohol consumption for both men and women, but the assertion that there is “no safe level of consumption”. Any pretence that official advice on alcohol consumption was about influencing drinking behaviour, and encouraging moderate consumption, was destroyed when the new ‘low-risk’ guideline was set at a level that was widely derided by the drinking public and the industry alike as having no basis in the reality of peoples’ drinking habits. Since “public health” has no belief in the efficacy of education as a driver of social change, because they believe it’s a soft option embraced by Big Alcohol as a means of warding-off real change, the only purpose of the new guidelines was to influence public policy. Specifically, alcohol policy.

Fundamental to this latest attempt to demonise alcohol is a determined effort at science-denial. Denial that there are any health benefits to moderate alcohol consumption despite decades of science showing that regular, moderate drinking results in lower all-cause mortality and greater longevity than that associated with abstinence. Coupled with this is the attempt to link low and moderate consumption of alcohol with a range of cancers on the basis of, largely, very weak epidemiological associations.

By establishing the “no safe level of consumption” and the “every time I reach for a glass of wine I think of the cancer risk” mantras, “public health” seeks to establish through propaganda what it can’t establish through science: that alcohol can’t be part of a healthy lifestyle.

The House of Lords committee on the Licensing Act 2003

The positive aspect of this review of the effectiveness of the Licensing Act 2003 is that, by all accounts, their Lordships really do “get it” – they are very much aware of the issues and the differences of opinion and are seeking evidence. My concern at the outset of this inquiry is that it was just a cover for seeking the introduction of a fifth licensing objective – ‘Promoting and Protecting Public Health’, or even ‘Promoting and Protecting Health and Welfare’.

If we were to see the introduction of a ‘health’ licensing objective, then this would open the door to all the career alcophobes of so-called “public health” like James Nicholls from Alcohol Research UK, and Jon Foster from the Institute of Alcohol Studies, to encourage local PCTs to oppose applications for new licences. It’s probably not a practical possibility for them to do this for every application, but if your fundamental belief is that it’s the availability of alcohol that drives consumption and harm, then under what circumstances wouldn’t you object?

Minimum unit pricing

The Scottish Parliament legislated to introduce this in 2012. Since then it has been subject to legal challenge by the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) and others in respect of whether its implementation was contrary to European Union competition law.  In Scotland the Outer Court of Sessions ruled it was legal, but then the Inner Court of Sessions quashed that decision and sent it off to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be determined. The ECJ pretty much gave it the thumbs down, but returned it to the Scottish courts to determine. They gave it the thumbs up!

The position now is that the SWA wants to appeal this to the Supreme Court in London and have lodged an application with the Scottish Court for leave to appeal. The SWA’s decision to appeal has, of course, been subject to expressions of faux outrage by the cranks at Alcohol Focus Scotland who have characterised the decision to appeal as an affront to democracy! Comments like “it beggars belief” etc., etc.

I am opposed to MUP because I think it is a bad policy; if it also turns out, eventually, to be unlawful, then I think that would be enormously helpful. But, then we’re supposed to be leaving the EU aren’t we? So whether we continue to be subject to ECJ rulings will depend on whether we want access to the single market.

All three of these issues will continue to make waves in the coming year. Watch this space!

Hangover-free alcohol

I’ve been meaning to write about Professor David Nutt’s attempts to create a hangover-free form of alcohol for some time, but haven’t got round to it until now! Professor Nutt, you may recall, was an advisor on illegal drugs to the then Labour home secretary Alan Johnson. He suggested that ecstasy was no more dangerous than horse riding. Now, in terms of death and injury, on a purely statistical basis, he may have been right, but the comparison shows a not-real-world naivety in terms of how he must have imagined this would go down with his boss, who promptly sacked him.

But the good professor is nothing if not consistent. His new product, fetchingly called alcosynth, will, he says, replace regular alcohol by 2050. He has stated that: “The drinks industry knows that by 2050 alcohol will be gone. They know that and have been planning for this for at least ten years. But they don’t want to rush into it, because they’re making so much money from conventional alcohol.” Well, I have been accused of being quite close to the drinks industry, but the last time I spoke to “Big Alcohol” it never mentioned this to me! Sounds like a bit of wishful thinking from an entrepreneurial academic pushing what is, essentially, a kind of “legal high” with a novel marketing plan. It is unclear to me if alcosynth would be unlawful under the New Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, but I suspect it would.

According to Nutt, he has invented a form of synthetic alcohol that will allow people to enjoy the sociable effects of a few pints, “but skip the hangover that usually follows”. Quoted in the Independent he said: “So we know where the good effects of alcohol are mediated in the brain, and can mimic them. And by not touching the bad areas, we don’t have the bad effects.” You can have the pleasure without the pain! What an affront to puritanical thinking, no wonder Alan Johnson sacked him!

Advocates of alcosynth believe it could revolutionise public health by relieving the burden of alcohol-related harms on the health service. Now, I’m all in favour of finding private sector solutions to public health problems, such as e-cigarettes, which provide a safer nicotine delivery system to the conventional one that involves setting fire to a tube of tobacco and inhaling the smoke, but I really don’t think the comparison holds up. In addition to alcosynth, we have also recently seen the development of a powdered form of alcohol called Palcohol – flavoured, powdered alcohol added to water; and also vaporised alcohol that you can inhale. The government has now altered the legal definition of alcohol to include the powdered variety. 

Now, powdered alcohol and alcohol vapour producers don’t claim their products can deliver problem-free intoxication, but the development of all these products plays into the hands of the alcophobes of “public health” because one of the techniques they use to de-normalise alcohol use is to take the drinking of it completely out of its social and cultural context and say it is “just another drug”. Once we separate ethyl alcohol from beverage alcohol – from the tradition of craft and flavour, and the use of natural ingredients and local provenance – then those of us who defend the drinking of beverage alcohol as a lawful and socially acceptable activity are placed in an untenable position. 

There is, of course, a much simpler way of avoiding a hangover, and that is to drink in moderation. Also, it is unclear whether Professor Nutt’s alcosynth will deliver the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption – you know, those benefits that “public health” are in denial about – such as reduced risk of all-cause mortality and reduced incidence of ischaemic heart disease and stroke. 

Nice try professor, but I don’t think I’ll be abandoning my pint of IPA just yet!

NEO-TEMPERANCE STRIKES BACK!

On Friday the 21^st October Propel Opinion published an article written by me titled ‘Old Cider in New Bottles’ in which I discussed the significance of a piece of research done by four member organisations of the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) into how cheap white cider is still being sold at “pocket money prices”. I pointed out that Alcohol Concern had published a very similar piece on strong, cheap white cider in 2012, and that creating moral panic around ‘demon drinks’ was just a well-rehearsed way of smearing the entire drinks industry.

This article was also published on my blogsite ‘A Menace to Sobriety’ where it attracted a response from Dr. James Nicholls of Alcohol Research UK. ‘ARUK’ is a neo-temperance charitable trust that has legacy funding from the ‘Licensing Compensation Scheme’, a licensed trade levy established under the Licensing Act 1904 to facilitate reductions in the number of licensed premises – which kind of tells you where James Nicholls is coming from. In his response Dr. Nicholls angrily defended the AHA research and attacked my article. His full response can be read on my blogsite. Below I have responded to the main points that James Nicholls makes:

Dear James 

Thanks for your reply to my article. I am disappointed if the only message you can take from this is that I “object to any concerns about alcoholic drinks from any quarter”. I don’t; in fact, I make it clear in the article that I am neither a drinker nor a defender of strong white cider made from cheap apple concentrate. I actually wish this stuff was simply not produced; not least because its production provides a stick to beat the sector with, for those so inclined.

You also complain that I reject ‘whole population’ approaches (to alcohol-harm reduction) “out of hand”. Firstly, insofar as I am opposed to whole population measures, such as minimum unit pricing, I have rejected such measures only after full and due consideration. But, actually I am not opposed to all whole population measures. Let me give you two examples of such measures that I favour: the system of licensing for the sale of alcohol; and alcohol duty. Let’s take each of these in turn.

What is a licensing system if not a set of measures to manage the risks of alcohol misuse across the whole population? Licensing is where we square the circle between the individual’s freedom of choice and societal impacts. You and I might differ about how effective the present licensing system is at doing that, but we agree that there needs to be a system. I have certainly never suggested that the sale of alcohol should be completely deregulated and replaced by a free-for-all.

In relation to alcohol duty, again, we might disagree about the level of duty or about whether it needs to rise, but I accept the principle that if alcohol misuse causes ‘negative externalities’ that result in a cost to the public purse, then the state is perfectly entitled to recoup these costs from alcohol drinkers, even if the tax is not hypothecated. Indeed, as the research produced by the Institute of Economic Affairs (‘Alcohol and the Public Purse’, Snowdon 2015) makes clear, the amount of money collected from alcohol duty, and VAT on alcohol duty, exceeds the cost of alcohol to the public purse by some £6 billion a year.

You also comment that “I know you believe everyone expressing any concern about alcohol secretly wants to force the entire population onto sugar-free lemonade, but I'd have thought even you would realise that white cider arguments really are not the thin end of a whole population wedge.” 

James, I’m guessing that this was your attempt at mockery, but let’s just pretend for a moment that you were trying to make a serious point.  In January we saw the publication of the CMO’s low-risk drinking guidelines – 14 units a week for both sexes; this was coupled by the declaration that “there is no safe level of drinking”; and to dramatize just how unsafe any level of drinking really is we were given an insight into Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies’ anguished personal lifestyle choices: “Before I reach for my glass of wine I think about the cancer risk.” It seems to me abundantly clear that both the direction of travel and the destination that “public health” has in mind for alcohol is identical to that for tobacco – the end-game is an alcohol-free world, or as close to it as they can get. And that objective certainly isn’t a secret!

And do you mean to tell me that sugar-free fizzy drinks aren’t a health community ambition? I’m shocked.

My article simply suggests that singling out ‘demon drinks’ in the name of saving ‘problem drinkers’ from themselves, is little more than a neo-temperance marketing ploy that uses a drinks category with negligible market penetration to leverage further restrictions on all drinks and all drinkers - precisely in order to reduce consumption across the whole population. If you doubt that, then just look at the demands that the authors of this research make on the back of it: increase the duty on high strength cider (regardless of whether it is the cheap variety drunk by problem drinkers); reinstate the alcohol duty escalator; tax all alcoholic drinks according to their strength and implement minimum unit pricing.

Finally, you indignantly complain that: “individuals or organisations concerned with reducing alcohol-related harms - however much you may dislike them - are within their rights to draw attention to the issue.” Well, of course they are – even neo-temperance lobbyists like ARUK can do so! A difference of opinion is just a difference of opinion James; it’s not an attempt to suppress opinions I don’t like. This is a classic example of a paranoid “public health” pivot - claiming that criticism is an attack on your right to free speech is just a way of distracting attention from the angry silliness of what you have to say. 

Paul Chase

OLD CIDER IN NEW BOTTLES

Back in February 2012 Alcohol Concern published a report titled ‘White Cider and Street Drinkers’ which highlighted the impact these drinks have on homeless drinkers. Earlier this month the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA), an umbrella organisation that represents around 40 bodies from “public health” which consistently demonise alcohol and seek to de-normalise its use, have published a piece of faux research that generated headlines like “Alcohol continues to be sold at pocket money prices – AHA report finds”. And what alcohol are they referring to? You guessed it – white cider.

The AHA partner-organisations involved in preparing this report were the Institute of Alcohol Studies; Alcohol Focus Scotland; Balance, the Northeast Alcohol Office; and Healthier Futures. So what did this bunch of neo-temperance nannies actually do? Apparently they visited a range of off-sales premises “looking for the nation’s cheapest booze” - nothing like starting with a conclusion and then selecting evidence to ‘prove’ it – all in the name of science of course! Over 500 products were examined, but despite this they highlighted only one - white cider, which they described as “dominating the market for cheap, high-strength drinks”. And they went on to say that “High-strength white cider products, which are predominantly drunk by dependent and underage drinkers, are sold for as little as 16 pence per unit of alcohol”. The report goes on to dramatize the problem further by stating “For the cost of a standard off-peak cinema ticket you can buy seven and a half litres of 7.5% ABV white cider containing as much alcohol as 53 shots of vodka”.

So, what is the purpose of this report – what does the AHA hope to achieve? The demands made by the AHA on the back of this report are for government:

• To increase the duty on high-strength cider
• Reinstate the alcohol duty escalator
• Upon leaving the EU, tax all alcoholic drinks categories in proportion to their strength, and
• Implement a minimum unit price on all alcoholic drinks

The AHA’s strategy today is exactly the same as Alcohol Concern’s strategy back in 2012: to selectively demonise drinks’ categories that have only marginal market penetration, link them to groups of ‘vulnerable drinkers’, and then leverage the demand for alcohol restrictions on a much wider scale. Remember ‘alcopops’ and ‘vulnerable young drinkers’? Even at its peak this category accounted for less than 3.5% of the total volume of alcohol consumed in the UK. Remember ‘toffee vodka’ aimed apparently at ‘vulnerable young girl drinkers’? 

And if white cider is “dominating the market for cheap, high-strength drinks” the AHA forgets to mention that this category accounts for about a tenth of one percent of the total volume of alcohol sold in the UK. Yet these categories are held up as typical examples of a drinks’ industry out of control and unconcerned about the social impact of its products – and therefore “something must be done”.

Typically, the AHA links the demand for higher taxes for white cider to higher taxes for all ciders, which would involve levelling-up cider duties to match beer duty rates. We surely need to separate the lower taxes that are designed to protect our indigenous cider industry from the purchase of the cheap, foreign apple concentrate that is used in the production of super-strength white cider. Demonising drinks’ categories by reference to ‘vulnerable groups’ is a way of emotionalising the issues and softening up political and public opinion for further restrictions on all drinks and all drinkers.

Whilst I am neither a drinker, nor a defender of these particular ciders, I think we should be wary of those who proffer simple solutions to complex problems. Dependent drinking isn’t caused by the availability of a particular ‘problem drink’; it is highly linked to depressive illnesses and other mental health problems as well as a complex set of other social and psychological issues. The desire of dependent drinkers to numb this pain doesn’t go away if you ban or tax a particular drinks’ product. There will always be a substitute, whether it’s an alcoholic one or some other substance. And as for white cider being a favourite tipple of underage drinkers, curiously that was never mentioned in Alcohol Concern’s report in 2012, but maybe they missed a trick. Before anguished, hand-wringing meddlers cry “what about the children” they should perhaps remember that underage drinking is in sharp decline and the vast majority of underage drinkers get their booze from their parents or steal it from home.

Paul Chase

HANDS-OFF OUR PUDDINGS!

According to ‘The Times’ Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, recently told a private meeting with 100 food producers that eating out is “no longer a treat” and that chain restaurants, takeaways and fast food retailers should reduce the size of their puddings, cakes and pastries – and those that don’t will be publicly named and shamed! It is hard to think of a more egregious example of nanny-state meddling than this. But what is this based on and how will it work?

Apparently consumers will be able to check companies’ efforts on a website, although exactly how comparisons will be made has yet to be decided. This comes alongside food producers being asked to cut sugar in key products by 20% over the next five years, and the introduction of the sugar levy on soft drinks’ producers, due to come into effect in 2018. This is all about the government and Public Health England engaging in the ‘war on sugar’ in order to combat the ‘obesity epidemic’. Simply giving people information and letting them make a free choice is no longer enough - “Doing nothing is not an option”, Hunt said.

So, let’s just look at a couple of facts. There is no doubt that adult obesity has increased over the past 40 years across the world. The number of people in the UK with a body mass index over 30 has risen from 8% of the population to around 30%. Obesity is strongly associated with a number of chronic illnesses, particularly type-2 diabetes, although obesity is by no means the only cause. The question at issue here is how strongly is sugar consumption implicated in the rise in obesity and its related diseases? It is not so long ago that the fat content of our diet was regarded as the main cause of obesity, since when dietary fads such as the Atkins Diet have suggested that carbohydrates, which break down into sugars, are now regarded by many as the new ‘bad guy’ on the block.

Sugar consumption peaked in the UK in 1961 at just over 50 kilograms per capita. Today it is just over 30 kilograms, so the rise in obesity has correlated with a fall in the consumption of sugar added to our diets, including the sugar added to dessert products. But all sugars are not the same. Or are they? Insofar as blood sugar levels are a health worry, it is important to note that the blood sugar concerned, glucose, is not the same as the sugar we add to our tea or coffee, which is sucrose. Sucrose is a combination of two simpler sugars - glucose and fructose - which are separated when sucrose is digested. A great deal of concern has also been expressed about the use of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), but EU regulations strictly control HFCS production so it is far less commonly used in the UK than it is in the United States.

Whilst sucrose is an important source of glucose in the Western diet it is by no means the only one. Foods high in starch such as potatoes, rise, pasta and bread also break down into sucrose once consumed. So, even without food products that contain added sugar the switch from diets high in saturated fats to ones high in carbohydrates – which was official advice for nearly 40 years – will have increased our consumption of sugar.

A lot of the government policies in relation to diet and disease seem to reflect the views of noisy campaign groups like ‘Action on Sugar’. The justification they provide for government intervention is that ‘Big Food’ and ‘Big Sugar’ (like ‘Big Alcohol’) are engaged in a deliberate strategy of addiction. Sugar, according to Robert Lustig, the activist academic behind Action on Sugar, is an addictive substance and much of our food, particularly processed foods, is deliberately spiked with sugar to keep us hooked. And of course alcohol is an addictive substance too! This fantasy of a conspiracy of addiction leading to a form of covert corporate coercion is the basis on which groups like Action on Sugar seek to persuade government that people don’t really make free choices when they buy Jamie Oliver’s Eton Mess, or a can of cola.

It seems to me that people have plenty of information about the content of what they eat and drink and that there are a wide variety of ‘healthy choices’ available to them. Government intervention is only justified if there is a failure of the market to provide either information or choice and that is clearly not the case.  But that won’t stop nanny wagging her finger! Now, where did I put my pack of M&M’s?

Paul Chase

FABRIC AND THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL CONTROL IN THE NIGHT-TIME ECONOMY

The revocation of Fabric nightclub’s licence throws into sharp relief the blurred line between operator responsibility and personal responsibility. The closure followed the deaths of two young customers as a result of drugs allegedly taken and bought in the club. In addition to these deaths the licensing committee also found numerous breaches of licensing conditions, and in effect stated that the evidence pointed to security staff at the club turning a blind eye to drug taking and drug dealing on the premises. If Fabric appeals against the revocation decision we will no doubt see the truth of these allegations rigorously tested in court.

Fabric has a world-wide reputation and the case gained publicity because of a petition against the club’s closure signed by over 150,000 people; and even the Mayor of London expressed the hope that the club’s management and the authorities could find a way of working together that would enable the club to stay open. Clearly many people have great affection for Fabric and feel that the club shouldn’t be blamed for the tragedy of these deaths - because they are symptomatic of a much bigger societal problem that can’t be solved by a nightclub’s management, no matter what systems and procedures they put in place. And in particular, critics of the licensing authority’s decision to revoke say “don’t blame the music”!

The British Drugs Survey tells us:

• 15 million 16 - 44 year-olds have taken drugs – 31% of adult population
• 50% of 16 – 34 year-olds have taken drugs
• 23% of drug-takers use daily – 3.45 million
• 15% weekly – 2.25 million
• 7% monthly – 1.05 million
• A total of 6.75 million people regularly use – 45% of all drug users
• 16% of all users take drugs mostly in the NTE – That’s 2.4 million customers or 35.5% of regular users

The numbers above suggest to me that there is an entire generation of people who are no longer content that their only intoxicants should be alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. For many people taking drugs is part of a night out – whether we like it or not. But drug users in the night-time economy are not a homogenous group. They don’t all take the same drugs, or combination of drugs, and the dose will vary too. Just as not every drinker is a binge drinker, so not every drug user will be looking to take things to the max!

A spectrum exists, and at one end of it is the person who goes out on a Friday night with a gram of cocaine in their pocket and every 20 to 30 minutes they will visit the toilets and snort a line. For that person drug use is a part of, but only a part of, a night out. At the other end of the spectrum are drug users who go out once a week with the intention of getting ‘messed-up’. These are users who will take a combination of ‘M-Cat’ (mephadrone), ‘geebs’ (gamma-hydroxy buterate), ‘Ket’ (Ketamine – a horse sedative) and whatever chemical combination that might be getting sold as ‘ecstasy’ this week.

Police officers are generally realistic and know that it is impossible to entirely eliminate drug use from late-night premises. What attracts a drugs raid and then an expedited review and closure is when what is going on privately become blatantly obvious and public. Stopping that from happening is the job of management and for night-clubs in particular it involves management walking a tightrope. If you can’t entirely eliminate drug use from your premises, but you at least need to keep it down to a level where the police will accept that you’re making a proper attempt to address the problem, where is the line that divides one from the other?

Night-clubs attract particular attention because of three things: firstly, they are often the biggest venue in a town centre; secondly, they are the last port of call for people on a night out; and thirdly they attract an audience with a longer dwell-time than a bar which has a constantly shifting population, and a big through-put of people. And here’s where an operator needs to think very carefully about what kind of audience they are attracting. The music policy will determine the audience. That said, unless you are constantly playing the musical score from The Sound of Music, there will be some drug users in your audience. But are there some forms of music that attract a high percentage of the sort of extreme drug users that only want to listen or dance to the music when they are in an altered state of consciousness? And are we burying our heads in the sand if we think the control problems that throws up can be managed in a way that maintains the confidence of the police?  

I don’t think the law that prohibits drug use is likely to change any time soon – if ever. In the meantime society needs an honest conversation about drugs if we aren’t to lose even more young lives and iconic music venues.

A LESSON FROM HISTORY NOT LEARNT

The era of the legal prohibition of alcohol in the United States that lasted from 1920 to 1933 is both the subject of history and the stuff of legend. The era of the cultural prohibition of alcohol in the United Kingdom that began in 2005, and hasn’t yet ended, has a history up to this point, but will probably never create an Al Capone to compete with the American legend. But there are lessons to be learnt from both.

The main lesson from the American experience is that the law cannot successfully suppress a mass market in an open society. The attempt to do so led to the corruption of police, judges, politicians and public officials on a massive scale. It led to the rampant gangsterism that spawned Al Capone and helped finance the Cosa Nostra’s diversification into illegal drugs. Drinking alcohol didn’t fall by much either, although the quality of it did; some 10,000 people are thought to have died from drinking poisonous moonshine during America’s era of prohibition.

Lesson learnt? Well, not quite. India is now embarking on an experiment in alcohol prohibition that is truly breath-taking in scale. More than 200 million Indians now live in ‘dry’ states where the sale of alcohol is banned. That’s approximately twice the population of the United States in 1920. I say “embarking on”, but in the state of Gujurat alcohol has been banned since 1958, but contraband alcohol is readily available there. A thriving industry making moonshine that has become established, as well as bootleggers smuggling in alcohol from ‘wet’ states, ensures that Gujurat’s booze ban is ineffective. 

But the ban has been spreading rapidly. Bihar, India’s third most populous state, brought in a complete ban on the consumption of alcohol in April this year. And, no doubt learning the lessons of Gujurat, they don’t mess about when it comes to deterrent punishments. You can now be sentenced to death in Bihar if you make or sell alcohol, and you can be sentenced to life imprisonment for drinking it! And the state authorities aren’t above instituting a bit of collective punishment either. The new law holds all family members over 18 years old guilty if anyone has been drinking in a house, and you can get up to 10 years for failing to inform police of an offence. Despite these draconian punishments it seems alcohol is still widely available in Bihar.

It appears India has a growing alcohol problem even though only about a third of Indians drink. Mostly Indians consume spirits, and an increasing number of people just drink to get drunk. Sound familiar? The impetus for legal prohibition has come from women’s groups and ambitious local politicians – just as it did in America with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and agitation from local political activists. It seems many more will die or be imprisoned before the outcome of this experiment in prohibition is determined. I think one of the reasons why successive generations have to relearn the lessons of history is that very few people read history any more. Watch this space.

In the UK anti-alcohol health zealots know they can’t call for the outright legal prohibition of alcohol because the public will then recognise them for the cranks they are. So, in the UK over the past 10 years we have seen a much more subtle campaign of cultural prohibition by stealth. This has culminated in the Chief Medical Officers’ new, low risk drinking guidelines of 14 units a week – approximately three quarters of a pint of beer a day. Protests by trade organisations and published research by Camra detailing the rejection of this advice by GP’s and the public at large has convinced the government to soften the language around this. So, out goes “there is no safe level of consumption” and in comes “the risks are similar to that of driving a car”. 

But our cultural prohibitionists haven’t finished yet. The media around the CMO’s drinking limits is all about establishing the link between alcohol and cancer as a means of discouraging people from drinking. And experience in other contexts shows this works. Do you remember the headline a couple of years ago “A bacon sandwich a day raises your risk of colon cancer”? Recently published research shows that this had an extraordinary effect on public perception and levels of consumption (of bacon). 

A World Health Organisation report that classified processed meat such as bacon and sausages as carcinogens had a big impact. A survey showed that nearly 50% of people in all age groups were aware of this conclusion and around a third of people said they were trying to cut down on consumption. And this was reflected in sales figures. In the four weeks subsequent to the publication of the WHO’s report and the headlines accompanying it, sales of packs of bacon in the UK fell by 8.5% and this appears to have been a stepped change that hasn’t reversed itself.

Anti-alcohol campaigners have latched onto this tactic and you can expect lots more junk science linking alcohol with cancers even though the evidence is extraordinarily weak. The temperance movement is quite prepared to tell “noble lies” if it advances their cause. The lesson we need to learn is that we have to engage the drinker in the alcohol debate. When we do, government backtracks. I have written a lengthy piece on alcohol and cancer in CPL’s magazine Aspire. Do have a read.