At the Risk of Torturing a Metaphor, The Herd May Be Turning on Neo Prohibitionism

It’s very difficult to turn a stampeding herd of cattle. I know this from personal experience: Westerns. I’ve noticed it’s always tough for the prickly, sun-worn Western veteran to turn a rushing herd of cattle. And you can’t just get Kevin Costner or Sam Elliot to stand in front of the herd and expect it to stop or turn. You have to coax it into turning by forcing the leader to turn. Anyone who has watched Yellowstone knows this.

Folks in the wine business know this well.

Those who both make and sell wine know what it means to see a herd turn. Over the past decade, a somewhat sizable herd of people has been turned away from accepting moderate drinking toward a neurotic fear of alcohol consumption. That fear has been coaxed into existence by economic uncertainty, a collection of activist health officials selling an unsupported tale of catastrophe at the bottom of a wine glass, and the support of a media establishment that correctly assessed that carrying the water on extremist alcohol claims sells more views and clicks.

At the risk of torturing my metaphor (something I’m most assuredly about to do), it is being recognized within the wine industry and the alcohol industry as a whole that it needs to unleash its cowboys and cowgirls in pursuit of turning back the stampeding cattle in the direction of moderate consumption and (sorry) greener pastures. I’ll get to that, but first I want to take note of what appears to be the beginning of the always-inevitable pushback against narrative.

We are beginning to see the media contemplate the meaning of the extremist, “no safe level” messaging that has come to dominate public policy and reporting on alcohol and alcohol consumption. Read the following and you’ll see what I mean:

Why The World Still Can’t Agree On Alcohol—Time Magazine

Is One Drink a Day Really Bad For You—F. Perry Wilson

None of these articles are full-throated challenges to the “no safe leve” messaging. Rather, they either contemplate the social meaning of drinking less or they suggest perhaps a bit of nuance is missing from the You-Are-Going-To-Die-If-You-Sip-That-Chardonnay school of public health messaging.