Last month DRN surveyed 400 readers on what they considered the greatest threats to the future health of the drinks industry and the anti-alcohol lobby came second. That left it behind only future duty hikes and ahead of exchange rate issues, Brexit, disinterest among younger adults and various other concerns. We went to the Portman Group’s offices in London to talk to chief executive John…

Of all the topics this column has returned to, I wish that anti-alcohol rhetoric wasn’t the most frequent. But it remains one of the most threatening issues the wine trade is facing, and the one which our industry seems to find most challenging to counter effectively. As usual, the beginning of the year heralded articles across mainstream media promoting dry January. This typifies the general…

A new campaign group set up to give drinkers a voice in the national media has enjoyed plenty of success on its first weekend up and running. Drinkers’ Voice aims to give the public a voice in the debate on moderate drinking, arguing that for too long the anti-alcohol lobby has dominated the conversation. The group said this has resulted in “misleading statistics and scaremongering…

Last week columnist Guy Woodward launched a quite extraordinary rant in our sister title, Harpers, in which he railed against the Scotch Whisky Association and argued in favour of minimum unit pricing. He called the SWA “shabby” for fighting MUP and threw his weight behind the anti-alcohol lobby. The basis for his argument was a press release put out by the neo-prohibitionist brigade…

A leading cider producer has challenged the anti-alcohol lobby over the unsubstantiated claims it has been making about white cider in the national media. The Alcohol Health Alliance decided to target cider above 7.5% abv for a Budget clobbering and launched a media blitz that earned it headlines across the national media in March. The press releases made unsubstantiated and alarmist claims…

Pressure is building on the Department of Health to revise controversial guidelines limiting alcohol consumption to 14 units after it was revealed that anti-alcohol lobbyists played a large role in setting them. The panel that devised the guidelines included four members of the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS), a lobby group bankrolled by the temperance movement. Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance…

Red Army vodka, which is sold in a glass bottle shaped like a gun, has breached alcohol responsibility rules for its association with violence and aggression. A complaint was submitted by the Responsible Retailing Code of Northern Ireland, which claimed the product was closely linked with violent, aggressive, dangerous and anti-social behaviour. Producer Bartex protested its innocence and said it was never its intention to…