The new prohibition?
The alcohol industry has applauded battles to conquer the evils of excess, from drink-driving and underaged binge drinking. But now, as Roger Morris reports, social drinking is under fire.
Are we seeing the dawn of a new temperance movement, 100 years after the US began its “noble experiment” with Prohibition?
Even before New Year’s Eve 2020, gaiety was quieting down, social media influencers in the UK were touting the advent of Dry January, a time when people would pledge not to sip any real wine, beer or cocktails for a month.
At the same time, wine media in the United States was peppered with offers of expert interviews explaining the virtues of the sober curious movement.
Reports during the winter – before the Covid-19 pandemic closed everything down – that US retailers such as Nordstrom, Crate & Barrel, Whole Foods Market and Giant were turning shopping hours into happy hours by offering customers a free drink had public health experts exercising social shaming for what they called “shopping under the influence”.
Judy Grisel, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Pennsylvania’s Bucknell University, was quoted as saying: “Now the message is that we need to be drinking even when we’re buying food for dinner.”
Separately, in a move that may hurt wine glass manufacturers more than wine producers, Public Health England attacked the size of serving glasses, no matter how small the pour.
And even the definition for “under the influence” or drink-driving may be ratcheted down. The general standard in the US is a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.08 or higher, but now one state is considering reducing that to 0.05.
The US’s Prohibition was an exercise in social engineering and religious piety that was to last for a turbulent 13 years, between 1920 and 1933, years punctuated by bootlegging and gang violence, as well as boiling up angry bubbles in the country’s famed melting pot of cultures.
While pious Protestants were the driving force behind the advent of the long, dry season, many wineries were kept alive for the duration by producing altar wines for America’s Catholic minority. In the rugged mountains of Appalachia, where abstinence was a requirement for most church-goers, the heritage of illegal whisky production – “moon-shining” born in colonial days as a protest against taxation – experienced a wide-scale rebirth.
Even after the repeal of Prohibition, three-quarters of a century later there still remains an uncomfortable truce between those who want to preserve social drinking and those who warn of the dangers to health and societal problems brought on by excessive consumption.
This unease continues a century later, not only in the US, but also worldwide. Without doubt, after Prohibition, a culture emerged that romanticised excessive drinking with a sort of roguish swagger, and in some states it was even legal to drink while driving.
One of Frank Sinatra’s songs of the period has him asking the bartender to “make it one for my baby, and one more for the road”. And to a certain extent, binge drinking still remains a rite of passage on college campuses. But in 1980 a from-the-ground-up citizens group, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (Madd), challenged this culture.
Founded by Candace Lightner after her daughter was killed by a drunken driver, Madd struck a responsive chord with the public and eventually with lawmakers. Limits were set for permissible blood alcohol levels, and those caught violating them were prosecuted.
Changing mission
By 1997, Madd was so successful that it had already met its year 2000 goal, which was to reduce alcohol-related deaths in the US by 20%.
According to some of Madd’s present-day critics, it was at this point that the huge, non-profit organisation with a multimillion-dollar budget started changing its mission from targeting drunken drivers to telling people who drink – even socially – not to drive at all.
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Founder Lightner left the group in 1985, saying in a 2002 interview with the Washington Times: “Madd has become far more neo-Prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned. I didn’t start Madd to deal with alcohol.”
I started Madd to deal with the issue of drink-driving.” Through the years the US definition of driving under the influence has considerably shrunk to the current blood alcohol content of 0.08. Now, one state – Michigan – is considering lowering that to 0.05. “Right now, Madd is supporting states that introduce legislation to lower the BAC to 0.05,” says Kristin Davis, Madd’s communication director, “but we are not campaigning for a nationwide BAC of 0.05 at this time.” Asked if Madd could endorse a specific goal as an acceptable BAC level other than zero, Davis says only that “Madd has always said that the safest choice is not to drive at all after drinking”.
The Wine Institute, the primary research and lobbying group for California wineries, says its stands by its 2013 policy statement that declares: “The legal threshold of 0.08 BAC was established as a safe level of consumption based on science and law-enforcement guidance. Lowering the legal threshold would effectively criminalize moderate social drinking by responsible adults and divert resources that should be used to target drunk drivers.”
While groups such as Madd have been combating the societal pain excessive drinkers imposed on innocent citizens, other organisations around the globe, particularly governmental ones, have concentrated on the health damage that alcoholics inflict upon themselves and, along with it, the economic costs they impose in countries with socialised and semi-socialised medicine.
MILLIONS OF DEATHS
Chief among these groups is the World Health Organization (WHO). Among the key facts WHO has marshalled are that “worldwide, three million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, which represent 5.3 % of all deaths” and “in the age group 20–39 years, approximately 13.5 % of the total deaths are alcohol-attributable”.
In February 2020, WHO members Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Russia, Iran, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam wrote a draft proposal to replace the organisation’s 2010 strategy, calling for “accelerating action to reduce the harmful use of alcohol”. However, their more forceful draft was watered down, and a less ambitious one sponsored by the EU and Norway was approved instead.
WHO relies on medical studies illustrating the relationship between even modest alcohol consumption and a variety of diseases. One currently receiving increased attention is the carcinogenic link between alcohol and a variety of cancers.
In the US, a government agency, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), annually conducts or supports a myriad of alcohol-related studies. In a prepared statement for this article, two of the NIAAA’s top scientists, Aaron White and Ralph Hingson, emphasised that “NIAAA supports the current US Dietary Guidelines for alcohol consumption for adults 21 and older – no more than one drink per day for women or two drinks per day for men. Even at these low levels, the risks of adverse health effects are not zero.
“For instance, recent epidemiological studies suggest that even one drink per day could increase the risk of breast cancer for women.”
However, the two officials do concede that “most adults who consume alcohol do so within the moderate drinking guidelines and do not experience or cause alcohol-related harms”.
It should be noted that while WHO and the NIAAA seldom advocate specific remedial actions that governments should take, advocacy groups latch onto their studies to do just that. It also should be noted that seldom does advocacy science, pro or con, ever fund studies that they expect will not prove the study’s hypothesis, nor herald the results if they occasionally do not.
As well as targeting the dangers caused to others by excessive drinking and on themselves, temperance groups’ most vigorous campaigns are reserved for advertising practices used by wine, spirits and beer producers and their trade organisations, especially as related to underage drinkers.
THE FRENCH CONNECTION
In many countries, such as the US, there exists a sort of détente between the alcoholic beverages industry and reformers, resulting in industry self- regulation of its marketing and advertising. No such peace accord exists in Europe. French-based Association Nationale de Prévention en Alcoologie et Addictologie (ANPAA) says: “The impact on the environment on consumption (advertising, accessibility, price) is deliberately ignored” by what it calls “big alcohol”, “as is any proposal for binding alcohol policy matters”. ANPAA has been particularl iirate at the French government and President Emmanuel Macron, citing his “disregard of the warning of the health minister and for promoting the wine culture of France”.
Further, it accuses “big alcohol lobby groups Wine Academy of France and Vin et Société of attacking the stance of the minister of health,” which was to further restrict alcohol sales at sporting events. Much of the reformists’ concerns are focused on online content generated by alcoholic beverages producers, including advertisements, games and promotions, which, they charge, end up being viewed by young people. Jonathan Noel, of the University of Connecticut, is author of frequently quoted studies showing how trade industry messages reach under-age drinkers on social media. “Preventing online peer influence entirely is likely impossible,” he says, “but it may be limited if social media platforms disable the Like, Share, Comments or Tweet functions.” But he is more optimistic that adult drinking content can be steered away from them.
Noel says: “It will require rigorous age- verification procedures that compare the information used to enter a website (name, date of birth) to a government database, such as driver’s license or voter registrations. I think this is a process that has been adopted by several tobacco companies.” But for now there seems to be no search by temperance groups for a common ground between abstinence and over-indulgence.
Should the wine trade be concerned about today’s resurgent temperance movement? It probably depends on whether you see your glass as half empty or half full.
