First the target was tobacco. Then burgers. So how has Big Alcohol stayed out of the lawyers' sights?

Adam Jones
A century or more ago, tortured aesthetes would express their exquisite yearning for death with an unfiltered French cigarette in one hand and a shot of hard liquor in the other. Today, rising concern about obesity would seem to make a chocolate bar a more lethal choice than a measure of absinthe.

While tobacco remains the most vilified of the legal vices, makers of fattening foods are now also being besieged by hostile lobby groups, lawyers, politicians and the media, all seeking to hold them to account for their customers' poor eating habits. In the latest sign of the pressure food producers are under, Kraft, the multinational, has announced it is to cut portion sizes and reduce fat and sugar content.

In contrast - and to the private amazement of some food and tobacco executives - makers of alcoholic drinks have escaped the same level of scrutiny. This is perhaps surprising: drinkers after all cause or suffer a broader range of social ills than over-eaters, including road accidents, violent crime, unwanted pregnancies, marital breakdowns, disease and absenteeism.

Moreover, globally, alcohol consumption has been rising. Average per capita consumption around the world rose 12 per cent between 1990 and 2001, according to World Drinks Trends, a standard industry data source. The broadest surge has been in the emerging markets of Latin America and eastern Europe, where it has often gone hand in hand with economic growth.

According to the World Health Organisation, 140m people suffer from alcohol dependence.

Even in the US - where many of the legal threats to tobacco and food manufacturers have emerged - alcohol is getting easier to buy. Some states have loosened rules forbidding Sunday sales and rolled back laws that stopped residents buying direct from out-of-state winemakers. In South Carolina there is momentum to get rid of one of the oddest licensing quirks in the US: the rule that says all spirits served in the state's bars have to be poured from the sort of mini-bottles found on aircraft.

Several states have recently legalised in-store tastings of spirits, which is great news for Big Alcohol's profits. Frank Coleman, of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, says: "To get people to buy up from a $20 bottle of Scotch to a $40 bottle, you have to get them to taste it."

So has Big Alcohol - the loose grouping of spirits, beer and wine multi-nationals such as Diageo, Allied Domecq, Brown-Forman, Anheuser-Busch, SABMiller and Heineken - really succeeded in presenting itself as just another manufacturing industry? Not quite. But it has shown an ability to influence the public health debate in ways that could be instructive to beleaguered food executives.

One reason the alcohol industry has largely escaped tobacco-style litigation is that consumption in some rich nations is declining. The British may show an increased thirst for wine; beer consumption has risen in Ireland. But in the US - in spite of the emergence of Modern Drunkard, a magazine and website that smirkingly celebrate alcoholic excess - consumption has fallen. The average American consumed the equivalent of 6.7 litres of pure alcohol in 2001, down from 8.3 litres in 1980. The French also drink much less than they used to 30 years ago, as do the Italians.

A second reason, argues John Banzhaf, the George Washington University law professor who was a pioneer of smoking lawsuits and is now at the forefront of obesity litigation, is that it may be harder for drinkers to plead ignorance in court. "The dangers associated with over-consumption of alcohol are arguably far better known."

Last month a TGI Fridays restaurant franchisee from Ohio paid $21m to settle a lawsuit brought by the parents of two teenagers killed in a car crash caused by a drunk customer. But this is a threat to retailers, not directly to producers of alcoholic drinks.

Third, Big Alcohol has benefited precisely because of the growing concern with tobacco use and obesity. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the industry's most powerful critics, which has given $5bn to health causes, says childhood obesity is now its main concern. Although treatment for alcohol abusers is still a funding priority, the foundation has decided that prevention is no longer a primary goal.

Similarly, the World Health Organisation has concentrated its recent efforts on cutting tobacco use. In the 1980s its European arm made one of the boldest experiments since Prohibition to cut general drinking, calling for per capita consumption to dwindle in Europe to just 75 per cent of 1980 levels by 2000. But, despite some success in France, the goal was not achieved, and the WHO has not committed itself to any new targets for reducing consumption in Europe or worldwide. The last time the assembly of WHO member nations adopted a resolution on alcohol was 1983. Since then there have been many resolutions on tobacco.

Derek Yach, the WHO executive director in charge of its work on tobacco, alcohol and bad diet, admits that Gro Harlem Brundtland, its director-general, "hasn't really engaged substantially in the alcohol area" for fear of compromising the WHO's work in cutting tobacco use. The WHO was worried the tobacco and alcohol lobbies would join forces to oppose it if Dr Brundtland opened a second front against alcohol, Dr Yach said.

Rather, the WHO has been seeking a dialogue with industry. Drinks companies complained after they were not invited to a May 2002 meeting that led the WHO to claim that young people were being aggressively wooed. Representatives of some of the biggest drinks companies were then invited to meet WHO officials in February - the first such meeting.

The WHO remains concerned about the marketing of alcohol to the young and about the "ubiquity" of drinks advertisements. At a conference in Stockholm, Dr Brundtland railed against the targeting of the young by marketers, likening this "manipulation" to an incident she experienced as a student when her drink was spiked with 96 per cent proof medical alcohol.

Dr Yach is pragmatic about involving industry in a way that would be unthinkable for the WHO on tobacco. Alcohol does not have "anywhere near the lethality of tobacco", he said: "The nature of the product lends itself to having a more flexible approach."

Drinks companies have succeeded in much of the above for two reasons. First, they have shown a willingness to submit to responsible self-regulation - something largely missing from the food industry. Second, they have successfully encouraged a distinction between overall consumption and the need to curtail patterns of excessive drinking.

"The more you make drink available, the more people will actually drink and the more harm will be done to health."

Big increases in drinking have tended to attract the attention of public health campaigners, thanks to an influential school of thought that directly links higher average consumption to a higher incidence of alcohol-related harm. If countries reduce per capita consumption through curbs on advertising and availability, alcohol-related problems will also decline, the thinking goes. The alcohol lobby has long claimed that this is a discredited, "neo-prohibitionist" theory that punishes responsible drinkers with higher taxes and shorter bar hours.

The balance of power between these two viewpoints - one leaning toward across-the-board cuts in boozing, the other seeking to limit action to specific problems such as binge drinking - varies around the world. But there are signs that Big Alcohol may have neutralised the worst of the threat posed by the control-of-consumption theory.

A warning shot was fired by David Byrne, the European Union commissioner for health and consumer protection, who challenged the drinks industry to prove that voluntary codes of conduct can work. However the commissioner's office now says no crackdown is planned.

Self-regulation in Britain is carried out through the Portman Group. Its independent complaints panel bared its teeth in May in what was described as a "landmark" decision against an alcopop called fcuk Spirit. This sugary, fruit-flavoured drink - made by Constellation Brands, the world's biggest wine company - borrowed the name of a popular clothing brand and had to be withdrawn after it was deemed more likely to appeal to under-18s than to adults.

Although fcuk Spirit launched in the autumn of 2001, the panel acted only in May 2003 because it had to wait for the public to complain first. By this time the UK alcopop sector was declining anyway.

Individual companies have also found ways of showing that they are serious about fighting alcohol abuse. Internal codes of conduct have been strengthened. Messages about responsible drinking are creeping into mainstream advertising outside the US, where they have been incorporated for a long time.

Diageo, the world's biggest spirits company, is launching television adverts for Smirnoff vodka that exhort drinkers in the UK and Ireland to know when to stop. It also bankrolled an African feature film based round Michael Power, a fictional hero who features in its Guinness adverts. The film contains sensible drinking messages as well as product placement.

Alcohol's cause is helped by the fact that so many governments rely on the tax revenue it brings in. Scientific claims that moderate drinking can be good for your health have been another factor in the argument.

Big Alcohol has also emphasised the limitations of its power in order to placate opponents. The leading producers stress that much of the world's alcohol is made by small operators that would register on few regulatory radar screens, not least because many are illegal producers.

Even so, the alcohol industry faces some degree of backlash. In Ireland, a taskforce on alcohol abuse found last year that drastic measures had to be taken after consumption increased 41 per cent between 1989 and 1999. Ireland liberalised its licensing laws in 2000, stretching the basic trading hours to 12.30am, Thursday to Saturday. Police statistics suggest that this coincided with a big rise in public drunkeness and disorderly or violent behaviour.

Revised legislation bans "happy hours" and imposes an 11.30pm closing time on Thursdays to ensure that young drinkers show up for lectures or work on Fridays. The taskforce has recommended an increase in taxes to reduce average consumption.

Ireland's toughening stance on general alcohol consumption contrasts with plans in England and Wales where an overhaul of licensing laws will clear the way for 24-hour pub opening. Hand in hand with this planned liberalisation, the government is drawing up a long-awaited strategy for limiting alcohol abuse. But some public health experts are dismayed by the direction of reform.

Griffith Edwards, the founder of the National Addiction Centre at King's College London, says: "The more you make drink available, the more people will actually drink and the more harm will be done to health."

The contradictions in the UK reflect the paradox of alcohol. While many individuals believe it is a commodity that enriches their lives, it all too clearly ruins the lives of a few. The same is true of fattening foods, seen as a legitimate indulgence by many but a debilitating habit for others.

The modern tendency for policymakers to seek dialogue with Big Alcohol rather than call for aggressive cuts in general consumption will continue to disappoint those seeking a harder line. But a similar pattern of collaboration rather than confrontation may well emerge in the food industry - leaving tobacco as a lonely public health pariah.

Adam Jones is a journalist with The Financial Times. We are very grateful to the Editor of that newspaper for permission to reproduce the article which appeared in the edition of 8th July, 2003.