Protz: Time to focus on the hard facts
We live in frightening times. I have been writing about beer and extolling its virtues for more than 30 years, and for most of that time I have felt engaged in positive and even honourable work.
But today, as result of the latest media onslaught, I am reduced to the level of a street-corner drug dealer. I walk nervously down the street, in fear that people will point their bony fingers at me, crying: "Unclean! Unclean!"
The newly-formed Alcohol Health Alliance's (AHA) report last week, which called for higher taxes on alcohol and restrictions on advertising and pub opening hours, was not only given great prominence by the media, but its arguments also went unchallenged.
The BBC, which is supposed to give balance where contentious issues are concerned, led its news bulletins with the AHA story, making no attempt to counter any of the alliance's claims.
Brainwashed
Instead we were brainwashed with the usual, warmed-over images of binge drinkers fighting, falling over and vomiting in town centres. We weren't told when those images were taken.
It would be interesting to know whether they pre-date changes in the licensing laws.
Hardly a day goes by without another "expert" pontificating on the problem of alcohol abuse. The worst so far was featured on Andrew Neil's late-night discussion programme This Week on BBC1 last Thursday.
Leading the charge on the alcohol issue was Professor Roger Williams, who was the late George Best's physician.
I think if that were my main claim to fame I would take a vow of silence and enter a Trappist monastery. But Professor Williams felt free to give viewers "facts" about alcohol abuse that had no semblance of truth attached to them.
He said alcohol consumption in Britain was rising and had doubled over the past 10 years. Wrong: consumption is falling - and last year's drop was the biggest for 15 years.
He claimed the British had overtaken the French in the consumption of alcohol and alcohol-related disease, but advanced no evidence for this claim.
What is true is that Britain is 15th on the EU's list of countries for alcohol consumption, way below the French.
And when the good professor went on to make the usual demand for a sharp rise in tax to counter heavy drinking, he conveniently ignored the fact that the French pay 90% less tax on alcohol than the British but have a binge-drinking problem five times smaller than ours.
Taxation
In other words, taxation is not a useful weapon if you want to curb heavy drinking.
A few years ago, I was told during a visit to Sweden that the Swedes save up for a month and then hit Stockholm for a wild weekend of excessive drinking.
They do more damage to themselves and other people over the course of two or three days than British binge drinkers could dream of.
But never let facts get in the way of a good scare story. Labour MP Diane Abbott, a regular This Week contributor, chipped in that "24- hour drinking" was fuelling binge drinking. Wrong: binge drinking has fallen since the introduction of the new licensing hours.
And when "experts" such as Professor Williams and spokesmen for the AHA claim that heavy drinking is leading to an increase in liver disease, they ignore the findings of another branch of the medical profession that claim a causal link between obesity and liver disease.
In other words, it's not just heavy drinking that is to blame.
Of course, there's a problem in Britain. A minority - and it's a small, declining minority - of foolish people are determined to drink themselves stupid at every opportunity.
Education
The problem can be tackled by education at school and by the Government stopping the sale of massively-discounted booze in supermarkets.
Increasing taxation won't work. It will not only penalise the moderate majority but will drive those determined to get drunk towards cheaper, more dangerous forms of alcohol.
I am grateful to Mark Hastings at the British Beer & Pub Association for checking and adding to my facts. He's a sane man in a mad, mad world.
Read more Protz at www.beer-pages.com.
