First They Came For Alcohol...Now They Come for Non-Alcohol
The anti-alcohol zealots can't even abide non-alcohol if it resembles alcohol at all
What exactly do they want?
This is the question that many folks observing the activities and machinations of the anti-alcohol brigade across the globe have tried to answer. The more generous among us offer that their goals are simply to reduce the harm that comes with overconsumption of alcohol. The other side of the coin is those observers who claim they want a return to prohibition of alcohol sales and/or consumption.
I think this crew of often unhinged activists do in fact want to see less harm from overconsumption. And I generally don’t think that prohibition of alcohol consumption is what they seek if only because the likelihood of achieving this goal is so unlikely.
But somethings I wonder. Consider the following
“Alcohol Justice” is an American-based anti-alcohol group that has been advocating for harsh restrictions on access to alcohol and alcohol marketing. Ostensibly their goal is to reduce harm that results from overconsumption.
Yet here, in this tweet, they can’t even get behind NON-alcoholic alternatives to alcohol. Alcohol-free beer ”risks costing more lives”.
The tweet links to an article by Phil Cain, a writer and advocate who has brought his special brand of anti-alcohol advocacy to the World Health Organization and the European Alcohol Policy Alliance and who publishes something called “Alcohol Review.”
In this article, we are told that 1) the coverage of the rise of no/low alcohol drinks is just “a gimmick to pre-empt criticism” of alcohol”, 2) an “artful public relations triumphing over rational scientific and journalistic enquiry”, and 3) that “The stakes are too high to let uncertainty [around the meaning of non-alcoholic beer] delay the implementation of evidence-based action to reduce record levels of harm.”
So I have to ask, if the anti-alcohol folks can’t get behind the promotion and consumption of NON-alcoholic drinks, then just what could they possibly want?