What do the neo-Prohibitionists want?

Yes, they want us to stop drinking, but is there more going on than that?

Consider the following, which a fellow wine writer received after a recent column:

“There’s no appropriate level of alcohol consumption given that even an infrequent glass of wine or beer will spike cancer and more than an infrequent glass will do lasting liver and brain damage. Fortunately, consumption is falling in America & the best thing would be for it to fall further, faster.”

Hard to read, yes? The absolutes. The certainty. The righteousness. But read it, and know that’s where we are when it comes to alcohol in the the U.S. As a blog reader noted in a comment the other day: “An otherwise trenchant writer in my field (psychotherapy) told his readers that anyone who drinks more than a glass of wine at Christmas dinner is an alcoholic.”

The neo-Prohibitionists have taken control of the discussion, and until the wine business – and its colleagues in beer and spirits – take it back, we’re going to see more and more of this. And yes, it could come to the point where – as one very smart wine writer told me not long ago – drinking will be as much anathema as cigarette smoking.

The irony is that Prohibition was perhaps the greatest social failure in U.S. history. Which, of course, doesn’t matter to the neo-Prohibitionists because they know absolutely and certainly of their righteousness. History won’t dare repeat itself with them.

Frankly, I don’t understand why so many in the wine business are so terrified to call out the neo-Prohibitionists. What are they going to do? Cast a spell and turn everyone into frogs?

Because there are reasons to call them out. A German nutritionist, reported a British trade magazine, said that those of us who drink in moderation are being “stigmatised” by flawed alcohol studies. Nicolai Worm, PhD (who also consults for wine trade groups) was especially critical of research used to show that any alcohol consumption was evil.

Hmm. Think we’ll see that in the mainstream news media? I doubt it.

Also note that I mentioned Worm consults for wine trade groups. This is called being objective, which is something that every peer-reviewed scientific study should aspire to and so few seem to care about these days.

So turn me into a frog if you want. I’ll continue to drink in moderation; walk Churro, the blog’s associate editor, every morning; watch how many eggs and how much red meat I eat; avoid fried foods; and fill out my diet with grains, beans, and vegetables. Which seems like a damned healthy lifestyle, yes?

More about wine and health:
• Once more, how not to report a wine and health story
• One more reason to be wary of alcohol health studies
• Health alert! Does the CDC know how dangerous Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte is?