Alcohol is being stupidly demonised

Of all the topics in all the bars in all the world, alcohol occupies pride of place amongst Irish moral panics. An interesting coalition of interests is involved in the current storm. It brings together anti-alcohol campaigners with the therapeutic industry, campaigning journalists and public health epidemiologists.

All of the above suspects advance facts and figures to support their contention that alcohol is the fount of all evil and to argue for stringent controls. But, just as Colm O’Hare showed definitively in the last issue of Hot Press regarding drink driving, there are facts and facts – and the anti-alcohol lobby is at leaast as selective in its use of facts as is the alcohol industry.
By way of example, writing in the Irish Times some weeks ago Paul Cullen noted that a group of Scandinavian researchers had looked at the effects of large decreases in alcohol taxation in Denmark and Finland and increases in travellers’ allowances in Finland and Sweden after 2003.
Far from increasing consumption – as the anti-alcohol experts would have predicted – consumption remained the same.
Fascinatingly, however, the authors of the study, epidemiologists that they are, do not trust the results. One is quoted as saying that she would trust the national figures more than the survey and advances a range of reasons why it might be wrong…
Well, that would be fair enough if a similar scepticism was shown towards the ‘national figures’. These are calculated by dividing alcohol sales by population numbers.
But sociologists and economists regularly point out three problems with this. Firstly, the level of alcohol sales is calculated differently in each European country. As economist Danny McCoy wrote in the Irish Times last year: “In most European countries only spending in off-licences is attributed to the category ‘alcohol’ in national statistics, whereas money spent in pubs and restaurants is included in categories such as ‘recreation’ or ‘entertainment’.”
But in Ireland we count everything – and then the moral guardians refuse to let us in on the secret that there’s a difference. No wonder it seems we drink much more!
Secondly, our figures show the impact of the so-called population bulge which inflated the 18-35 age group until recently.
Thirdly, they also reflect the large influx of foreign workers, mostly young and from heavy drinking Eastern European countries. Let’s not forget, as Minister Conor Lenihan admitted some time ago, we don’t actually know how many there are. Which means they are not counted for calculating per-capita alcohol consumption.
In other words, every bottle they buy is put down to you and I.

It may be that the Irish drinking are drinking more, but it is necessary to carefully analyse the figures to be clear. In fact, the probability is that we are much closer to the Northern European mean than is usually admitted.
In like vein, we are often told that we are binge drinking more. Are we? In the old days a binge was when someone went on a serious batter, possibly lasting for days.
But according to the World Health Organisation – a strongly temperance-oriented body – a ‘binge’ is the consumption of five units or more of alcohol on a single occasion. This equates to 2.5 pints of beer, five measures of spirits or about three glasses of wine.
So, if two people share a bottle of wine over a meal they’ve been bingeing? Jaysus, lads, cop yerselves on! This is plain, old-fashioned, bullshit of the very lowest order.
The problem is that we are in the grip of a massive population Behaviour Control experimnt. To epidemiologists, everyone is at risk – and so the notion that we are all drinking dangerously has to be vigorously promoted, even if it’s wrong.
Not everyone is drinking more. Three glasses of wine with a meal is perfectly healthy for most people.
The most substantive research project on the subject is the Copenhagen City Heart study. In this, the health of 12,000 Danes enrolled was monitored over about 20 years, beginning in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
That’s a big study. And what did it find?
It found that the lowest risk of death from all causes was observed among the physically active, moderate drinkers, and the highest risk among the physically inactive non- and heavy drinkers.
The amount you should drink was calculated by the Daily Mail – hardly an advocate of drunken licence – as two and a half bottles of wine a week or two glasses a day.
Just short of a binge then…
The saddest aspect of it all is, of course, that there are some groups and individuals who really are in very deep trouble with alcohol. But the obsession with changing the values of those who don’t drink too much means that those who do (drink too much) are ignored – except when their behaviour offers an opportunity to lecture the rest of us, of course. The problem for the Temperance Bullies is that the rest of us have had enough of them...