The business of selling booze is under pressure

America’s relationship with alcohol has often straddled a perplexing dichotomy between total abstinence and unbridled excess.

George Washington supposedly plied voters in the first ever US election with gallons of alcohol, before later denouncing booze as “the ruin of half the workmen in this Country,” and 13 years of Prohibition gave rise to illegal bootleggers, lavish parties, and speakeasies. More recently, alcohol’s anchorage in American culture means that drinks brands sponsor athletic teams, and you can sit and have a beer in some Starbucks, Burger Kings, or Target stores (if you really want to).

But in recent years the business of selling alcohol has started to stumble.

Last call

On January 3, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for risk warningsto be included on alcoholic beverages, similar to those on cigarette packets, after new research linked alcohol use to ~100,000 cases of cancer and ~20,000 deaths each year in the US alone. Shares of several major alcohol brands, such as Jack Daniel’s parent company Brown-FormanBF.B $33.85 (-5.95%), dipped — but for the most part, the reaction to the news was muted, perhaps because major Western alcohol companies have had a miserable few years even before that.

Sober curiosity

In recent years, it’s become increasingly common for people to take a more dry approach to the first of 12 months that await them. While the concept of a no-drinking year-beginning dates back to 1942, when the Finnish government launched a “Sober January” initiative in their war effort against the Soviet Union, the modern phenomenon of “Dry January” was formalized in 2013 as part of a campaign by Alcohol Change UK encouraging people to remain sober for the entire month.

Just a decade later, in 2023, at least 175,000 people had officially signed up to Dry January on the Alcohol Change UK website… though the actual participation figure is likely much higher, as the movement has gained traction on social media and caught on in the US and other countries.

See the full article here.