How the Industry Should Respond to Misleading Attacks

We think it is long past time for the bev/al industry to stop being the punching bag for anti-alcohol zealots masquerading as "public health" advocates.

It's happening again, Tom Wark notes over on his Fermentation blog. New York City's Health Department has launched a "campaign to reduce New Yorkers' Risk of Alcohol-Related Cancers." A press release picked up the World Health Organization's mantra:

“Drinking alcohol increases cancer risk. Alcohol is a known carcinogen: consuming even one drink a day increases the risk for at least seven types of cancer, including breast, colorectum, esophagus, voice box, liver, mouth, and throat.”

Let me put on my communication professor's hat and make a flat statement: One of the best known facts about communication is that a lie repeated often enough becomes perceived as a fact. That was exactly the technique used by Hitler to turn the German people against Jews with whom they had peacefully coexisted for centuries. For instance, Hitler and its propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels:

• blamed Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I, claiming they undermined the war effort on the home front, despite the fact that many German Jews fought and died for their country.
• fabricated a link between Judaism and Communism, falsely claiming that Jewish people were organizing a worldwide communist conspiracy to destroy Western civilization.
• claimed Jews controlled world finance and media, plotting world domination.
• likened Jews to germs, parasites, vermin, and diseases, specifically accusing them of being responsible for typhus and other diseases.

The end was Germans accepted the systematic, industrialized murder of millions of Jews at various concentration camps.

The same tactics are being used by anti-alcohol zealots to demonize alcohol beverages. Now, let's acknowledge one totally obvious fact, excessive drinking kills. That's demonstrated by the famous J curve, which shows that people who drink too much have a much higher risk of dying early than people who have one or two drinks a day. The same J-shaped curve also shows that people who are life-long abstainers have a higher risk of early death than people who enjoy one or two beers, wines or spirits a day.

According to University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, women who drink less than one drink a week have an 11.3% risk of breast cancer in their lifetime. Raise that to one drink a day, and the risk increases to 13.1% in their lifetime. Two drinks raises that to 15.3%.

Consider the implication: A woman who never or seldom drinks any alcohol has an 11.3% chance of getting breast cancer in her lifetime. If she has one drink a day, the risk rises only 1.8 percentage points.

We have a suspicion the reason the industry doesn't respond to the anti-alcohol lobby is fear of admitting that alcohol consumption can be associated with breast cancer. (Note my language: "can be associated with..." As far as I know, every study has been a correlational study. But correlation does not equal causation.)

But, to paraphrase a former U.S. Senator, if you don't respond, you're admitting your opposition is correct. So, how should the industry respond?

First, by calling upon the New York City Health Department and all the anti-alcohol "public health" agencies to disclose the baseline cancer risk – 11.3% for breast cancer in a woman who drinks less than one drink a week. (I would like to find the figure for a woman who never drinks, but so far have failed.)

And then to point out that one drink a day raises that rise to just 13.1%, or an additional 1.8 percentage points. Or, two drinks to just 15.3%, or an additional four percentage points. And. finally, I would add a provocative question: "Why are they afraid to tell you the trust about alcohol?"