Prof Ian Gilmore, who runs the neo-temperance pressure group the Alcohol Health Alliance, is cheesed off with the chief executive of the brewer Asahi for saying that while he is “absolutely not denying that there are risks” associated with drinking, there is also “lots of evidence” that moderate alcohol consumption can have health and wellbeing benefits. For this measured and inarguable contribution to an article about how the alcohol industry could be facing its “tobacco moment”, Prof Gilmore has accused him — not unpredictably — of using a “tactic” from Big Tobacco’s “playbook”:
As a biomedical scientist and liver specialist, I know of no credible, independent expert in the field who would support these statements of disinformation.
Really?! Not a single one? What about the countless epidemiologists who have identified clear reductions in heart disease, stroke and diabetes risk among moderate drinkers for decades in every corner of the world? What about the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine which confirmed last year, for the umpteenth time, that moderate drinking reduces the risk of premature mortality? What about Professor Sir Richard Doll, one of the legends of public health, who concluded in 2002 that “the inverse relationship between ischemic heart disease and the consumption of small or moderate amounts of alcohol is, for the most part, causal” and should “now be regarded as proved”? Hell, even the Chief Medical Officer’s cherry-picked panel of anti-alcohol academics who lowered the drinking guidelines in 2016 had to admit that there were some health benefits from moderate alcohol consumption.
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