Freedom and whisky: lessons from the frontline

Thursday May 1, 2008

What lessons can the drinks industry learn from the war on tobacco, asks Tom Bruce-Gardyne

In the opening scene of the 2006 satire Thank You for Smoking, a chat show host introduces her guests – assorted lobbyists and health professionals, a boy with cancer and Nick Naylor, the chief spokesman for Big Tobacco. As he stares out at the hate-filled studio audience, Naylor muses that he is about as popular as a Nazi war criminal. His only friends in the film are the woman representing ‘Big Alcohol’ and the guy who lobbies for firearms. They meet every Friday for lunch as the MOD squad or ‘merchants of death’.

That the twin vices of cigarettes and booze should bond together against the forces raged against them sounds highly plausible. In truth however, there has been little collaboration partly because alcohol believes it is on firmer ground. When questioned by ‘Harpers’ in 2002, Eileen Fredrikson, of the California wine consultants – Gomberg Fredrikson, said the difference with ‘Big Tobacco’ was that they “knowingly produced a product that if used properly will harm you. There is no such evidence that if used properly alcohol will be detrimental.”

As for any bonding between the two industries in the UK, Chris Ogden of the Tobacco Manufacturers Association (TMA), says there has been “absolutely none – in fact they (the drinks trade) have tended to distance themselves from tobacco because they didn’t want the association. They couldn’t see the bigger picture – that if the Government could get away with curbing a perfectly legitimate industry, they could clearly do the same to them, which of course they are.” As a director of the TMA and spokesman for the ‘evil weed’, Ogden is Britain’s answer to Nick Naylor.

Next target

There was one moment of contact however, at the 2006 World Whisky Conference in Scotland. Wyndham Carver, secretary general of the imported tobacco producers advisory council (ITPAC), told delegates that they were the next target for the health lobby. To make his point he plastered stark, tobacco-style health warnings like ‘alcohol kills’ onto a bottle of Scotch. The marketing folk at the conference were shocked to see their precious logos abused.

But the biggest wake up call came from Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer himself, in an interview he gave in July. Under the title ‘Fat Binge drinkers beware’, he told Telegraph readers that “Tobacco is a good example of a health problem that is in hand, but when we turn to obesity and alcohol misuse, those are not yet anywhere under control.” Given calls for tax hikes and a pre-watershed ban on TV advertising, plus laws to restrict off-trade sales in Scotland, there is no doubt the demon drink is already seriously on the agenda.

According to Simon Clark of the smokers rights group Forest, one reason for this is that the health campaigners are well ahead of the curve. “The anti-smoking lobby were amazed that they got a comprehensive ban in 2007 as they thought they’d get it in 2010.” This is not to say the coal-face campaigners at ASH (Action on Smoking & Health) have suddenly jumped ship to join the newly formed AHA (Alcohol Health Alliance). This would be unlikely as they believe the war against smoking must go on what with 1.3 million smokers in Scotland alone of whom apparently 70% are keen to quit. Interestingly ASH do not want tobacco banned outright, possibly because that might mean voting themselves out of a job.

Social change

ASH UK claim the smoking ban in England was one of the most successful social change campaigns in recent years. The group’s Deborah Arnott and Ian Wilmore wrote about their tactics in July 2006, stating the first priority was to build a broad coalition to create a ‘swarm effect’. Of course this is exactly what has now happened with drink given the arrival of the Alcohol Health Alliance in November. It comprises 24 organisations representing everyone from nurses to liver specialists to groups like Alcohol Concern. It is chaired by Professor Ian Gilmore, the President of the Royal College of Physicians whose London branch established ASH in 1971. Small wonder that Wyndham Carver experienced a “complete sense of déjà vu.”

The second priority is to split the opposition. The anti-smoking campaigners realised the desires of the tobacco trade and the hospitality industry were ‘subtly different’. If some kind of ban was inevitable, the worst case scenario for the on-trade was for restrictions to be imposed locally. A blanket ban to maintain a level playing-field was preferable. The antis were also helped by devolution in Scotland with MSP’s determined to improve the country’s image as the sick man of Europe.

However the Irish beat them to it in March 2004, becoming the first country in the world to prohibit smoking in all enclosed public places. Outside commentators predicted civil disobedience on a grand scale. Instead one pub in Galway made a stand and then backed down a few days later, and a bored Fine Gael MP lit up in Parliament as a publicity stunt. That was about it. In hindsight the tobacco industry may have underestimated the Irish threat because it led directly to the UK ban, starting with Scotland under Jack McConnell.

Modern nation

“I don’t think McConnell would have dreamt of introducing a ban in Scotland had it not happened first in Ireland,” says Simon Clark. The First Minister visited Dublin soon after the ban and returned home converted. “I think he and others saw it as a way to portray Scotland as a young, modern nation breaking away and being different from England.” Instead of revolution on the streets and bankrupt pubs, he had seen the world’s media camped out in the city and reporting a positive news story with no mention of paramilitary shenanigans.

Back in Scotland, MSP’s called for a national debate, though the cigarette companies were not invited. Instead their views were represented by Paul Waterson of the Scottish Licensed Trade Association. According to Clark this was “very deliberate as they wanted to make it a debate between health and profit – a situation where there can only be one winner.” Whether this scenario will be repeated for alcohol remains to be seen, but one thing is clear – the debate has already begun and it is being driven by the Scots.

For all the tactics, the real turning point for tobacco was passive smoking as Chris Ogden explains. “It was outstandingly clever, because previously they were saying to the smoker ‘Don’t you realise you are killing yourself?’ And the smoker was saying ‘I may or may not be. It’s none of your business, go away’. Then they hit on this brilliant wheeze – ‘You’re not just killing yourself, you’re killing everyone around you’.”

Achilles heel

So what could be the drinks industry’s equivalent to passive smoking, which like tobacco could prove its Achilles heel? Ogden barely pauses for breath. “Oh, the antis would have a field-day – domestic violence, crime, traffic accidents … anything occasioned by the consumption of alcohol. There is far more to choose from than with tobacco.” And he has a point as no one has ever been arrested for driving under the influence of Benson & Hedges, or Marlboro, or even Silk Cut.

Literally speaking ‘passive drinking’ sounds absurd as if you could get drunk on the fumes coming off your mate’s pint of beer in the pub. But of course the health lobby doesn’t mean it like that. Anyone still doubting the parallel should download the leaflet on AHA’s website. Under the title ‘Why do we need an Alcohol Health Alliance?’ it lists 5 reasons. The fifth runs as follows: “The ‘passive effects’ of alcohol misuse are catastrophic – rape, sexual assault, domestic and other violence, drunk driving and street disorder – alcohol affects thousands more innocent victims than passive smoking.”

The overall message from Big Tobacco to Big Alcohol is fight your corner. “My advice to any industry under threat that is behaving perfectly legitimately is stand up for your rights,” says Chris Ogden. “Dig your heels in because appeasement does not work – every concession you make they will move on to the next one. It’s inexorable because a whole industry will build up around alcohol control as it has built up around tobacco control. There will be jobs involved, research grant money involved, trips around the world involved … as it starts to generate a dynamic of its own.”

Too soft

Jeremy Beadles of the Wine & Spirit Trade Association accepts the drinks trade may have been too soft in the past. “But I think now you will find we are up for the fight and we are working together across the industry to make sure we have got cue call responses. Because actually a huge amount of their case is based on very, very spurious evidence.” A classic example of health lobby spin was to find a 75cl bottle of water in a supermarket, gross the price up to 2 litres and then find a 2 litre bottle of cider for less. ‘Alcohol cheaper than water’ made a great headline and though not strictly true if you compare like for like, resurfaced verbatim in the Scottish National Party’s 2007 manifesto. To counter such claims, Simon Clark says the drinks trade must form a rapid response unit.

Some parts of the opposition occasionally get carried away like the Edinburgh GP who suggested drinkers should carry swipe cards to restrict themselves to 2-3 units of alcohol a night. There is also a chance the attack on middle-class drinkers at home, may backfire. But the lesson from tobacco, is that the other side should never be underestimated for its highly professional and relentless lobbying. Wyndham Carver speaks of a ‘cold, hard, obsessive drive.’ There is unlikely to be any let up for ‘Big Alcohol’, and as C.S Lewis put it “those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

Tom Bruce-Gardyne is a writer and journalist and author of Scotch Whisky (2007). This article first appeared in Harpers magazine and is reproduced with the permission of the author.