Sober reflections

Last week’s issue of the Spectator magazine contained a very insightful article by Henry Jeffreys entitled How Britain sobered up, looking at how this country has fallen out of love with drinking alcohol. The whole thing is well worth reading*, but this paragraph is particularly salient:

The real losers in Britain have been pubs. Since 2000, Britain has lost more than 13,000 pubs – a quarter of its total – and the rate of closures is growing. It doesn’t help that we are all increasingly told to drink less: in 2016, recommendations for drinking levels were lowered to 14 units for men and women in Britain. The World Health Organisation even states that there is no safe level for alcohol consumption, despite numerous studies which show that in small quantities alcohol can be beneficial to our health. Not that you are likely to hear about the benefits of drinking from the alcohol industry. Instead, it is fighting a losing battle in enemy territory, up against public health officials and the NHS.

We are subjected to an ever-growing amount of anti-alcohol messaging, not just specifically health-related, but also lifestyle pieces preaching the benefits of an alcohol-free lifestyle and celebrity interviews dissecting their alcohol problems and proudly proclaiming their newly sober status. The pleasures of moderate drinking and the companionship of pubs rarely get a look-in. Inevitably, this is going to influence people’s decision-making, especially amoungst younger people who are just beginning to form their social habits.

Many people who comment on pubs and beer direct much of their ire at rapacious brewers and pub companies, while the anti-drink lobby gets off relatively lightly. Yet this must be one of the key reasons for the decline of the pub trade in recent years. You have to wonder why CAMRA allowed its Drinkers’ Voice initiative, specificially set up to combat anti-drink messaging, to wither on the vine.

The author concludes:

If we’re not careful, we might soon discover that alcohol has become an unaffordable luxury, or something bought from the supermarket, with the only place to drink it being in the home. It’s a sobering thought. The cheap pint of beer in a local pub or the £10 bottle of wine imported by that funny little chap from France can’t exist without a lively drinking culture to support them… The risk is that we throw away our infrastructure of sociable, controlled intoxication in pubs, bars and restaurants. The sort of places where we can meet others and random encounters can happen, where young people can dance, flirt and laugh. In other words, civilisation.

* The article is paywalled, but a free registration will allow you to read a couple of articles a month. If you’re really interested, I can send you the full text.