The public health crusade against booze includes demands for increased tax, an advertising ban, and now warning labels on the risks of cancer. Yet for now, the political will to act has faltered in the face of economic gloom and US tariffs, reports Tom Bruce-Gardyne  ... 

'Booze faces its big tobacco moment' declared the FT on March 22nd in a headline co-opted by numerous others. From a public health lobby perspective, the parallels to the evil weed are hard to miss. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), alcohol is as carcinogenic as asbestos, radiation and tobacco. This led to its highly contentious claim that there was 'no safe limit' to consumption in January 2023. 

Surveys showed that people were largely ignorant of any carcinogenic link, which prompted ferocious lobbying of governments to bring in mandatory health warnings. Ireland was set to be the pioneer next May. It would be another feather in its progressive cap, having been the first country to ban smoking in public places in 2004. 

For Scotch whisky, what's all the fuss you might wonder. The state – call it 'nanny state' if you like – was merely doing its duty to inform the public. Any blend or single malt would look just the same on a supermarket shelf or backbar in Dublin as anywhere else, with its branding fully intact. 

Only when you swivelled the bottle round, would you see a 60 x 30mm back label with the words linking the drink to 'FATAL CANCERS'. A stark warning for sure, but not one that would dent sales too much, you would imgine.  

Of course, the ambitions of those behind such a move would not rest there. For Mike Coppen-Gardner of the PR firm SPQR it "mirrors exactly how tobacco regulation began - with mandatory health warnings that gradually expanded and became more graphic over time. By declaring that no safe level exists, regulators create justification for unlimited intervention." 

In the end, at the eleventh hour, the Irish government delayed implementing the labels for three years in July. There were cries of betrayal and "political surrender" from Alcohol Action Ireland, and fingers were inevitably pointed at the pantomime villain - Big Alcohol and its vast lobbying power. 

In truth, it was not the industry but Donald Trump and his tariffs that caused the Irish government to wobble. It was encouraging that Ireland's taoiseach Micheál Martin suggested that any advances in this area would be "in concert with the European Union" according to the drinks business. 

Within the EU, at least in southern Europe, the WHO has been struggling to get its anti-alcohol message across. In Italy for example, every politician knows the country's wine industry is really hurting with 20% tariffs in its biggest market – America, and that it employs a lot of people and that means a lot of votes.  

Ireland could have been an outlier with its health labels, and it is clearly not that important for Scotch whisky. However, much bigger markets have been flirting with the idea, not least the US. In January, Joe Biden's outgoing surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, called for putting labels on alcohol to warn consumers that drinking increases the risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and at least five other malignancies. 

We now have Trump and the maverick US health secretary Robert F Kennedy with a new US Dietary Guidelines for Adults due out at the end of the year. "We don't know what they're going to do about the guidelines; they may not yet know themselves," wrote W Blake Gray in Wine-Searcher in September. "They could do literally anything." 

Both men are teetotal, yet the omens would appear promising. Of the two agencies tasked with reporting to Congress, the one that took a strict neo-prohibitionist stance has been defunded. The other that goes by the acronym NASEM is more amenable to moderate drinking, according to W Blake Gray. 

Industry sources are reluctant to be quoted directly, but one told me the following: "There is a small, very noisy group of people who would love to treat alcohol like tobacco, mainly NGOs. But the vast majority of people just don't view these substances in the same way. Never say never, for there are always daft ideas in regulation. The fight will continue, but I don't see any real appetite from your average regulator or government to tobacco-ize our sector." 

The public health lobby ranged against the demon drink is notable for its tenacity. As C.S Lewis famously said: "Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." 

For now, the tide seems to have turned slightly against them, but it will return. Next time, Scotch whisky and the rest of the drinks industry would do well to recruit their greatest asset – the drinkers themselves.  

Meanwhile, Spiros Malandrakis, senior analyst at Euromonitor, argues the debate on alcohol should move from physical to mental health. "We have the most polarised society, probably in a generation, with people sitting alone, depressed in their own space," he says. "Drink has brought people together for 5-10,000 years. Even the most ardent proponents of the WHO most likely have a beer once every month with friends. It's not controversial."