Drinking is ingrained in our social life – much as cigarettes were until public health campaigns led to a huge cultural shift. With many young people eschewing alcohol, the beginning of the end of booze Britain is in sight
Acool glass of sauvignon canalside in the summer. A soothing beer by a pub fire as the leaves turn red. Mulled wine with a Christmas mince pie. Alcohol is shot through British life like, well, shots on a night out. But recent trends suggest that might be changing. Could the British love of booze be drying up as surely as our passion for cigarettes?
Consider this: in 1974, half of British adults smoked; by 2017, that figure had fallen to just 16%, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The decline was a result both of public health campaigns and legislation encouraging people to cut back or stop smoking. In 2003, for instance, the branding of cigarettes as “light” was banned in the UK. That same year, EU legislation brought in health warnings on products, and in March 2006 Scotland became the first country in the UK to introduce a smoke-free law. This was followed in 2007 by legislation banning smoking in workplaces and enclosed public spaces in England (Wales and Northern Ireland also legislated against smoking that year).
The result was immediate: fag breaks at work were suddenly more frowned upon; the huddle of people outside the pub failing to light a cigarette in the driving rain came to seem pitiful. All the incremental changes – the health warnings, legislation, the images of diseased lungs on fag packets, the association with impotence – led to a genuine cultural shift. If you wanted to keep smoking, you had to be really committed (addicted, maybe?). Social and fairweather smokers dropped away.
Could the same trend be under way with our attitude to alcohol? Some experts believe so. It will be a huge shift, because drinking in the UK has a spirited history, stretching back thousands of years – jugs for fermenting alcohol go back to the stone age, past Hogarth’s Beer Street and Gin Lane in the 1700s through to the peak modern drinking period of the 90s and early 00s. This was the Britpop era: a wasted Jarvis Cocker mooning at Michael Jackson at the Brit awards in 1996 and the hideous proliferation of garish alcopops with brand names with no vowels. That period also saw a breakdown in the social taboos around women’s drinking that led to an explosion of alcohol being marketed to them. Witness the birth of the ladette and girlfriends drinking boyfriends under the table. Witness a massive overall rise in consumption.
As a society, we have always thought of drinking as a bit naughty. The language we use is telling. A “cheeky pint” after work; a “swift half”; “OK, but just one glass of merlot”. Everyone has feigned resistance at one time or another – but we don’t try very hard. And in recent decades, anyone who didn’t want to drink was considered an anomaly. You driving? You sick? You on antibiotics? You pregnant? You, you know … (whisper it) in recovery? An answer of none of the above would elicit raised eyebrows, a puzzled expression or, more likely, mirth. Possibly even anger or dislike. In years past, people who have chosen sobriety, or rarely had a drink, have been subject to intense peer pressure. Nondrinkers became isolated – not out of preference, but because British social life has been entirely organised around alcohol. Booze sat at the head of the table at dinner parties, dominated the dancefloor and landed deals at lunch meetings.
But over the past decade, that culture has shifted. It has certainly been difficult to avoid the news that alcohol isn’t good for you. The most recent reminder came last week, care of a Lancet paper, reporting that every glass of wine or pint of beer over the daily recommended limit will cut half an hour from the expected lifespan of a 40-year-old. And that recommended upper safe limit is lower than you might expect. The paper suggested five 175ml glasses of wine or five pints a week – about 12.5 units in total. Overdo it, and you are at greater risk of stroke, fatal aneurysm, heart failure and early death.
Then there’s the cancer risk. There was consternation in 2016 when Prof Dame Sally Davies, the government’s chief medical officer, told MPs just one glass of wine could increase the risk of breast cancer. This came just a few weeks after the recommended upper safe limit for men was revised down from 21 to 14 units a week, the same as for women.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
