Alcohol has always been political

And notes on the Surgeon General's report.

As the story goes, there was a publican in Galway who asked a local distiller to deliver him some poitín, a type of Irish spirit. At the time, Ireland was under British rule and poitín was illegal to make and sell, so deliveries and trade had to be made through backchannels.

For some reason, there was bad blood between the two. Setting a trap for the distiller, the publican gave the distiller the address of a constable in the city. One night, the unsuspecting distiller showed up at the constable's house with a few liters of poitín. Surprised, the constable went along with it and asked the distiller who he had to thank for the special delivery. The distiller played coy at first, but eventually he gave him the name of the publican. After a few minutes of questioning, the constable took the poitín, thanked the distiller and let him go on his way. A few days later, the detective raided the publican's house.

Or at least that’s how Pádraic’s late grandfather Jimmy told the story. He was a seanchaí, or a storyteller for his community, and a fourth generation poitín distiller.

Why was poitín illegal? Was it particularly dangerous to make or consume? Was it being consumed in high levels and leading to civil disobedience across the island? No, it was illegal because England wanted to impose taxes on poitín and the Irish refused.

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At the beginning of the month, the US Surgeon General called for all bottles of alcohol to have a cancer warning on their label. Though in his report, he cited data that doesn't match the alarmist headlines:

Over the lifespan of a man, the absolute risk of developing any alcohol-related cancer increases from approximately 10.0% (about 10 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume less than one drink per week to about 11.4% (about 11 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume one drink daily on average to approximately 13.1% (about 13 out of every 100 individuals) for those who consume two drinks daily on average (Figure 5).

So, you're increasing your risk of cancer about 3.1% by going from less than one drink per week to 14 drinks per week. Sure, it increases, but that hardly seems to match the tone of the headlines about alcohol over the last few years. Recent discourse has made it seem like if your lips touch any trace of alcohol, you're about to get cancer. Not to mention all these statistics are based on self-reported longitudinal data, not controlled studies. If you exercise and live an otherwise healthy lifestyle, I'd bet much of that risk is mitigated.

The report also states that alcohol-related cancer is attributable to 20,000 deaths per year - this is too many, for sure. But for context, one of the other biggest killers in the US is heart disease, which killed over 700,000 people in 2022¹. Do you see heart disease risk labels on McDonald's menus?²

I didn’t find this news all that surprising. For the last few years, there has been a strange rise in neo-prohibitionary discourse around alcohol consumption. Especially on social media, the fervor with which people have been proclaiming their sobriety has been bizarre to watch unfold.

Of course, Americans have never had a healthy relationship with alcohol. We either abstain or binge with the religious zeal encoded in this country's DNA. It's how we do everything. As

Jason Wilson

writes, America is in Dire Need of Drink Literacy - not all alcohol is created equal, and nor is it consumed equally.

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I started with the story about poitín not only because I met up with Pádraic in Galway last November³, but because it is a central thesis to why I started writing The Daily Grog in the first place. Alcohol has always been and will always be political.

In the US, we had the Whiskey Rebellion and, of course, Prohibition. When it comes to Prohibition, the underlying race, class, and anti-immigration motivations of religious organizations that fueled the movement are often downplayed.

In Mexico, the lines and designations around raicilla and other mezcals are currently being established. These decisions will inherently elevate some voices and silence others. In my raicilla series last year I wrote:

With regulation - raicilla and otherwise - there are inherent decisions made about the voices being amplified and the ones that are ignored. These decisions are made through the definitions and language used in the legislation…Who gets to tell the story? Who gets to make the decisions about the future? That’s the worry for raicilla right now.

In England, private equity firms are suffocating pubs and effectively eliminating community centers in rural areas. In my pop-up newsletter, The Morning Tipple, I reference a study that shows a relationship between community pub closures and the propensity for residents to vote for a far-right political candidate. The author, Diane Bolet, explains:

The decline in these social places matters because they are not only functional enablers of social interaction; they also convey historical, geographical and social meanings that their inhabitants internalize and re-enact in their daily interactions within such spaces (Agnew, 2011). They develop a distinctive character, and become associated with distinctive traditions, for a specific social group, which has been described in sociology as a ‘communal ethos’ (McQuarrie, 2017). In turn, people come to feel a sense of belonging in, and develop attachments to, these places, groups and traditions; they become a part of their inhabitants’ cultural identity.

You’ll find stories like these across the world. And, wherever you go, the working class tends to bear the brunt of the political and industry games.

If I were to put on my tin foil hat, much of the current discourse feels like another indication of late-stage capitalism. We all buy our identity either as abstainers or as ready imbibers. Alcohol is woke. No, it’s for MAGA faithful. Or it ruins our gains at the gym. Wait maybe wine is for progressives and beer is for conservatives? It’s exhausting, really. But it’s not surprising that when the alcohol industry has found a new market they’ll be pushing as hard as they can to further entrench themselves in the lives of the American consumer.

Or maybe the Surgeon General is a political operative in the pocket of Big Mocktail - I mean have you seen mocktail prices these days???

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Alcohol can be problematic, there is no denying that. I’ve seen firsthand the impacts of alcoholism in my own family, and I know it can take toll on your body, both physically and mentally. I find that even just one or two drinks can disrupt my sleep and leave me feeling sluggish the next day. Drink or don't drink, it's a personal decision that we can all cost out for ourselves.

Personally, in a world where we’re more lonely, isolated, and disillusioned than we’ve ever been, I find sharing a beer with a friend (or stranger) is one of the few sources of magic we have left in the world.

Skylar

Dave Law, publican at The Eagle Alehouse in London

1. https://www.cdc.gov/heart-disease/data-research/facts-stats/index.html

2. Technically you could argue that the recommended 2,000 calorie notices you see are a proxy for heart disease, but that feels pretty weak and the data doesn’t really show it’s all the effective anyway.

3. I’ll have full notes on our conversation coming up shortly - on poitín, Ireland, Irish Whiskey, and other good stuff.