The Bill, re-introduced by Senator Patrick Brazeau after dying in the last election, would put tob…

Read more

Yes, it was the United Nations’ fourth High-Level Meeting (HLM) on Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Heal…

Read more

The outcome, a Political Declaration, will shape global alcohol policy to 2030 an…

Read more

Earlier this week, Tom Cole, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, called…

Read more

“Why now?”

Occasionally, I get questions that veer into conspiracy…

Read more

It started shortly after I became interested in just who, exactly, was partnering with the World Health Organization (WHO) on alcohol policy.

Wanting to know more, I started watching relevant presentations via YouTube whenever I was stuck in airports and had time to kill.

Pretty soon, I discovered that there are two types of public health discussions going on about alcohol. The first is about trying to quantify alcohol harms and develop solutions. The second is ideological. The academics and lobbyists driving this second type of discussion are dedicated to uprooting alcohol from society.

This second group fascinates me.

Before I knew it, I was watching alcohol control conferences and webinars whenever I had spare time, and not just in airports. It’s a classic dependency pattern — you think you control it, and then it controls you.

Photo by Giovanna Gomes on Unsplash

My habit got even worse after I developed a fondness for specific characters.

Like the academic who speaks with urgency about the need to take down transnational companies for the sake of our health, yet who just keeps showing the same old PowerPoint slides she’s been using for years. She’s adept at raising millions for her work, so you think she might present some actual research now and again at one of her many international speaking engagements, but no.

Another is the European lobbyist who calls the alcohol industry “the baddies” and tells the audience they must not let “the enemy” win. Yet who knows zero about alcohol is made, which is why she implores legislators to rip up vineyards and use the land for food production — not realising that vineyards tend to be planted on marginal land, particularly in Europe.

Yes, this is a weird hobby

And yes, I should get a life.

But guess what? It turns out I’m not the only one. I’ve discovered other people who are as fascinated by this stuff as I am. Sometimes, they email me things.

Like a video of George F. Koob PhD, speaking at a meeting in February 2024.

Koob is the Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and he addressed a group of high-level researchers to bring them up to speed on what the NIAAA had been up to in 2023.

George F. Koob PhD

One thing the organisation had been involved in was events around alcohol use and recovery in the workplace.

One such event was for a firefighting organisation, “where we reviewed risk factors for alcohol misuse and fire service and resources for treatment and recovery.”

Exactly like the event they’d done for the WHO the year before.

Read more

Read more

Read more

This means there’s no popular support for the alcohol control measures they’re pushing.

So the public health lobby has put a lot of thought and research money into how they can get the public to come around to their point of view — and they may have found the answer.

Photo by Martin Martz on Unsplash

Read more

Not because he makes alcohol or promotes it, but because his research is causing …

Read more

Right now, the U.S. government recommends two drinks a day for men and one for women — but that could be about to change.

The recommendations are being reviewed right now, and all the signs are pointing to the amount being lowered. Because of this, and how the committee’s work is unfolding, the guidelines process has been controversial.

David Clement of Canada’s Consumer Choice Center watched the exact same fight unfold in Canada in 2023, involving some of the same people, over much the same issues. 

David Clement, North American Affairs Manager, Consumer Choice Center

Here’s a quick summary of the issues:

• The U.S. is revising its alcohol guidelines. 

• The current safe level of drinking is two drinks a day for men, and one for women.

• The U.S. committee includes three of the Canadians who were involved in reconsidering Canada’s guidelines for 2023.

• Previously, the Canadian government said it was safe for men to have 15 drinks a week and women to have 10.

• Canada’s safe drinking level was revised down to just two drinks a week in total.

• This caused such an outcry, including from addiction specialists, that the guidelines were never adopted.

•  David Clement wrote several articles for the Canadian media about what went wrong.

• He also discovered that two of the Canadian researchers on the Canadian panel had ties to Movendi, the Swedish temperance group that reinvented itself as a public health NGO. A third had accepted travel and hospitality from them.

I’ve written up the story for WineBusiness Monthly.

OK, a couple of things. The podcast interview with David was edited, because we discussed some specific researchers and I couldn’t offer them the right of reply. I’ve put the discussion back into the following transcript, with an explanation of who, what and why.

Here we go:

Read more