The Slope Is Getting More Slippery Around Alcohol and Dietary Guidelines

Finland Recommends no alcohol because there is "no safe level"

“…the impact might be quite mild.”

I wonder if these could have been the last words of the crew members on the Titanic.

Instead, these are the words of Heidi Mäkinen MW, Partner of Finnish wine importing company, Viinitie. Ms. Mäkinen offered up this assessment in response to Finland’s just-released Dietary Guidelines that, as Meininger’s reports, advocates Finns “to abstain entirely from alcohol on grounds that there is ‘no safe level’ for alcohol use.”

It should be noted that the new alcohol guidelines are a significant change from the previous government guidelines that recommended Men consume only two drinks per day and women just one. Now the recommendation is zero. Those previous guidelines should sound familiar to Americans as they are identical to the current guidelines in the U.S.

Ms. Mäkinen is far too nonchalant about this development primarily because she is not taking into account liability concerns that anyone in Finland would have to contend with if they want to talk or write about alcohol consumption. That is to say, when discussing drinking alcohol, which we all know can be abused, it is nearly incumbent upon speakers and writers to make note of what is considered safe. Today in Finland, it is the official policy of the state that “there is no safe level of alcohol consumption”.

Over the next decade, this warning will be recited in every article, every speech, every document, and every conversation around alcohol consumption that occurs in Finland or is aimed at a Finnish audience. Every child now learning how to live will be taught from a young age that “there is no safe level of alcohol consumption”. Lawmakers concerning themselves with alcohol policy will, each and all, start their deliberations from the perspective that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.

The impact of this unprecedented government pronouncement and the way it is communicated from now on will be many-fold:

1. Consumption of alcohol will decline in Finland

2. Stricter marketing and sales regulations will be put into effect, further reducing consumption and sales.

3. Other European nations considering similar subject-matter will be influenced by Finland’s declaration that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption

4. Other European states will follow suit.

The impact will not be “quite mild”.

How Finland’s aping of the “No Safe Level” propaganda disseminated by the World Health Organization (WHO) may impact the new alcohol advice that is expected to be announced alongside the coming U.S. Dietary Guidelines is unknown. However, we can assume it will not serve to dissuade those crafting the U.S. guidelines to back away from taking the same “no safe level” line. My sources have told me this is exactly what those crafting the U.S. Dietary Guidelines are strongly considering.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea that the recent downturn in alcohol sales in the U.S. is due to the U.S. wine industry's inability to properly promote wine to younger generations and that the way we in the industry seek to educate consumers is detrimental and harming sales.

None of this is true in my estimation. I think it’s clear that the degree to which wine is selling less than other alcoholic beverages is due mostly to systemic economic factors. But if the fate of wine sales in the U.S. is largely a response to systemic economic factors the industry has no control over, I’m then led to consider what other factors could accelerate a noticeable decline in wine sales.

The answer is official instruction from the government that Americans should not drink alcohol. Such instruction is likely to come from the Dietary Guidelines assumed to be coming early in 2025. That schedule could be derailed by the new Trump administration, which has nominated recovering addict Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—which oversees the creation of the Dietary and alcohol Guidelines. Some smart people have speculated that Kennedy’s ascension to the head of the HHS could derail the release of the guidelines. We can only hope.

In the meantime, with Finland’s most recent declaration on there being “no safe level” of alcohol consumption, we are seeing the slope become significantly more slippery.