From Prohibition to Neo-Temperance With Dan Malleck
Plus, what the Templars are up to in Sweden
It’s been non-stop alcohol and health news lately. There was the NASEM report in December (moderate alcohol is good), the ICCPUD report in January (it’s bad) and then the Surgeon General’s warning (it’s very bad).
At least one academic has pushed back against Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy’s cancer Advisory.
“This is common temperance research methodology,” said Dan Malleck. “He is cherry-picking the evidence to advance an anti-alcohol agenda.”
Dan is an expert on the temperance movement. He’s Professor of Health Sciences at Brock University in Canada and specialises in the history of alcohol and drug policy. He says that plenty of anti-alcohol research is just “temperance in disguise”.
I’d been wanting to speak to him on the Drinks Insider podcast for a while, and it finally happened last week. The episode dropped today.
Dan Malleck showing what he thinks of neo-temperance.
Here’s what we cover:
1. How social movements become temperance
Prohibition didn’t just appear. It started as a grass-roots movement to help people deal with alcohol problems. But the evangelicals jumped on it — and we all know what happened next.
And now, it’s happening again, as public health lobbyists amplify what’s going on in wellness subcultures.
2. All harms, all the time
Dan argues that public health messaging around alcohol is unbalanced, focusing exclusively on harms while ignoring potential benefits. There’s also a tendency to oversimplify the message by focusing on ethanol as the only factor.
He says it’s now standard methodology for alcohol researchers to eliminate drink type from their studies and ignore the nuances of how different types of alcohol may have different effects. They also ignore social and cultural contexts.
3. Moralising
The modern neo-temperance movement echoes the tactics of the original anti-alcohol movement by framing health-related behaviors as moral issues.
While today’s neo-temperance lobby is no longer religious, the underlying moralising remains. This involves painting those who consume alcohol as people who need to be controlled because they’re making bad choices.
4. The perils of Prohibition
We discussed the tobacco control situation in Australia. While tobacco remains technically legal, the government has implemented every measure the public health lobby has called for — and the result has been mayhem. As organised crime has moved in to supply the market, arson, murder and intimidation have become commonplace.
Exactly what happened during Prohibition.
5. Cherry-picked research
And, of course, we talk about the J-curve and the public health lobby’s attack on it using black-box statistical methods and cherry-picked data.
All this and more! Dan and I got on like a house on fire, so the episode is a bit longer than usual, but it’s well worth hearing.
You’ll find it here — give it a listen!
(Oh, and Dan wasn’t the only person critical of the cancer warning. So was mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
Whole thread here.)
Goodbye to the Good Templars
The Swedish branch of temperance lobby Movendi, IOGT-NTO, is about to change its name. IOGT is an acronym for “International Order of Good Templars,” but a recent merger with the youth sobriety movement Junis means it’s time for a rebrand. The top two names under consideration are Nyktra and Nova.
It’s always been a bit weird that so many temperance groups used some version of the Knights Templar name because while the mediaeval military order might have been religious, it wasn’t anti-alcohol; they used to plant vineyards around their strongholds, and they definitely drank wine with their main meal.
The good news is that the very evocative Templar name will not be lost to history — there is, apparently, still an active Knights Templar group in Sweden.
The “Big Alcohol is lying to you” messaging
By the way, remember the post I wrote recently about the new communications strategy developed in the UK? The people behind it have released a short video about their methods and what they’re trying to achieve. Unfortunately, it’s only on LinkedIn, as far as I can see, but it’s worth logging in and watching.
Next week Drinks Insider will go back to talking about drinks entrepreneurialism!
This article!! Wooooo!!!! As someone in the health & wellness industry and the booze industry, it’s time to break down the BS that is gaining steam.
Also Jesus turned water into wine so maybe our evangelicals could remember that!
Can only agree from Swedenwhere the Templars repeatedly roll outa study by a US professor that shows how bad alcohol is. Its always him and always the same finding. To put you in picture anything above 3,5% needs to be purchased in a govt run monopoly shop called Systembolaget. Its name is not as cool as the Finnish equivalent Alki though.