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The anti-alcohol lobby reorganises
and, presumably merge the two offices and save even more
cost. All very sensible.
But what will really remain of AC’s campaigning efforts in
the future? ‘Dry January’ will presumably still go ahead in
January 2017 but after that will it be retained, rather like Fidel
Castro’s cigar, as the signature symbol of a dead icon or will
it be dispensed with? I guess that will depend on whether
AC’s funders are prepared to fund the AC part of the merged
charity.
And what will be the position of those key figures in ARUK
who insist theirs is an objective, independent research
organisation, now they are about to acquire an organisation
dedicated to advocacy and campaigning? ARUK states its aim
is to “reduce levels of alcohol-related harm by ensuring policy
and practice can always be developed on the basis of
research-based evidence” whereas AC states it “works
throughout England and Wales towards our vision of a world
where alcohol does no harm”.
There is a big difference between reducing levels of harm
and creating a world where alcohol does no harm, which,
given the mantra of ‘there is no safe level of alcohol
consumption’, can only mean a world without alcohol. Whose
vision will prevail? Given the tendency of anti-alcohol groups
to undergo Trotskyite-like splits, will this marriage of financial
convenience last, or might the Institute of Alcohol Studies and
IOGT win-out in the neo-temperance merger stakes? We’ll
have to wait and see.
Paul Chase
Paul is a director of CPL Training and a leading commentator
on on-trade health and alcohol policy. CPL Training is one of
the UK’s leading providers of training courses to the licensed
trade.
TIMES ADJUDICATION
On 30 May 2016, the Times ran an article headed “Antidrink
lobby drew up official safety limits”. It claimed that the
panel of experts who recommended the most recent
reduction in alcohol limits to the UK’s four chief medical
officers included several ‘anti-alcohol lobbyists’ from the
Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS) and went on to report the
comments of one scientist said to have a knowledge of the
panel’s workings who said that there had been a “determined
effort by ‘temperance activists’ to ‘demonise alcohol in the
same way as cigarettes but without the justification’” and that
their links to the IAS were not given in the biographical notes
for the panel. One of them complained to the Independent
Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) that the Times breached
Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice because
the CMOs had taken the decision themselves and that the IAS
was not an anti-alcohol organisation, did not have a view on
whether individuals should drink or not, does not ‘seek to
eradicate alcohol’, had never published any work promoting
total abstinence from alcohol and did not share the aim of its
funding body (the Alliance House Foundation) in promoting
total abstinence. The complaint was not upheld. If you wish
to see the full adjudication, go to www.ipso.co.uk/rulings-andresolution-statements/ruling/?id=04923-16.
Tony Hedger
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