The drinks industry would have not opposed health warning labels on alcohol if they did not pose an existential threat to its profits. However, Big Alcohol lobbying so hard to get the Government to delay implementation until 2029 may have backfired.
The unforeseen consequence is that more people now realise that alcohol is a class one carcinogen, in the same category as tobacco and asbestos.
If your reaction to that statement was either to flinch or roll your eyes, welcome to Ireland, where our relationship with alcohol is as convoluted and as hard to uproot as bindweed. Our per capita intake may not be the worst in Europe and it is true that it is falling, but our addiction to binge drinking means that our health is still getting hammered.
British travel writer and entrepreneur Dan Kieran once wrote a perceptive piece likening alcohol to a shared ritual, with an unspoken agreement that it is a good thing and part of who we are. He may as well have been taking about Ireland.
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He described some people’s tacit reaction to his decision to drink only on rare occasions, which amounted to: “It’s nice to see you and I’m in a good mood and there are lots of things worrying me at the moment [that] drinking allows me to forget briefly. Please don’t suggest I have a dependency problem and ruin it for me.”
Our relationship with alcohol starts early. A friend describes being astonished that parents she knows feel the need to facilitate their 16-year-olds’ “prinks” – pre-drinking, as in drinking alcohol at home before going out – as though access to alcopops is a human rights issue.
Evidence from UK-based drinks market analyst IWSR suggests that even Gen Z, formerly seen as abstemious, are starting to consume more alcohol.
IWSR sees it as positive that Gen Z are displaying “a greater willingness to explore and maintain wider repertoires among multiple drink categories; above-average engagement with spirits; [and] a more relaxed stance on sustained moderation”.
Tánaiste Simon Harris, a former champion of health labels, now supports delaying introduction of health labelling for years.
There may be concerns about unforeseen consequences, including pushing young people towards cocaine if alcohol use is reduced because of price increases. The cost of a gramme of cocaine is about €70, while a pint hovers somewhere between €6 and €7.
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But it’s often not one or the other. Very few people snort their first line of coke while stone cold sober. A 2019 Health Research Board study shows that alcohol was consumed in 85 per cent of first uses of cocaine. Alcohol is a gateway drug to cocaine, and taking cocaine enables people to drink more. We have such a weird relationship with alcohol that we would prefer to worry about cocaine use going up, rather than face the fact that most people’s drug of choice is alcohol.
Heavy-handed tactics by Big Alcohol backfired in Yukon, Canada, in 2017. Yukon, like Ireland, has high rates of binge-drinking and health-related harms like cancer. The Yukon government is directly involved in the sale of alcohol. Researchers saw tiny Yukon as an ideal location to conduct an eight-month real-world experiment on the impact of health warning labels. Bright yellow labels were affixed to alcohol in the government liquor store in Whitehorse, the capital.
The experiment was axed within a month after ferocious industry pressure. Emails obtained under freedom of information showed that industry leaders claimed the assertion “‘alcohol can cause cancer’ is a false and misleading statement”; one called the cancer-warning label “alarmist and misleading”. The relentless lobbying to drop the labels in Yukon only focused attention on the reasons behind the resistance.
In 2018, when the legislation regarding labelling was being introduced in Ireland, some industry members compared the carcinogenic effect of alcohol to that of burnt toast.
Drinkaware, which is funded by the alcohol industry, runs soulful ads featuring hip-hop artist Nealo, urging us to embrace mindful drinking. Meanwhile, the alcohol industry opposes all regulation that limits the availability, price and promotion of alcohol.
Alcohol is responsible for four deaths every day in Ireland and causes more than 200 types of illnesses and injuries, including seven common deadly cancers, fatal liver disease, and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. One in 13 cases of breast cancer is directly related to alcohol consumption. Worryingly, most people who are aware of the link think it is just heavy drinking that is problematic.
Saving lives by challenging a culture reinforced daily by a powerful global lobby requires courage. There will never be a good time to introduce labelling. There will always be an economic crisis or a powerful lobby that will be displeased. We were on the verge of doing something as revolutionary as the smoking ban, and we chickened out.
