News

Alcohol industry avoids confronting its drink problem

If an ‘average European drinker’ existed, he or she would drink 56 bottles of wine, more than seven bottles of spirits and 142 pints of beer a year.

This is big business for Europe’s drinks industry, which has 2.6 per cent of total consumer spending, 13 per cent of the total spent on food and drink, and an annual turnover of £95bn.

Nearly 700,000 people are directly employed by European manufacturers and distributors of alcohol, with perhaps 3 million more indirectly reliant on alcohol sales for their livelihood. Since 85 per cent of the European population drinks alcohol on a regular basis no-one should be surprised that governments avoid offending the public and undermining a profitable industry by challenging alcohol production and consumption on health grounds.

Yet alcohol is a lethal poison implicated as a cause of heart disease, high blood pressure, stomach ulcers, liver disease, brain damage and accidents. Much misery, many deaths and huge expenditure in the NHS could be avoided by reducing alcohol consumption. The alcohol industry is sensitive to the criticism that it causes so much social damage.

The Amsterdam Group, an organisation funded by 14 of the largest alcohol producers in Europe, has recently issued an interesting report about the social impact of alcohol. ‘The Amsterdam Group recognises that misuse of its products does indeed take place.’ it concedes. ‘Since such misuse is extremely detrimental to the image of the industry, as well as damaging to society, no one is more interested in redressing this problem than the industry itself.’

Increased taxation on alcohol would reduce alcohol consumption, but the industry resists this for obvious reasons, preferring to argue that there is no link between moderate and excessive consumption of alcohol.

In its view, heavy drinkers are a special group and efforts should be made to reduce their consumption, but not at the expense of the larger number of moderate drinkers.

The link between overall consumption and liver disease suggests that this view may be wrong, and that overall consumption needs to fall if the damaging impact of alcohol on health is to be reduced.

But the scientific jury is still out, and no doubt the Amsterdam Group will encourage prolonged debate while the industry does little or nothing to offset the damage caused by alcohol.

In the meantime the politicians will sit on the fence or blame the heavy drinkers. Does any political party have the courage to water the workers’ beer?