An alcohol ban is beginning to look inevitable

Large glasses of wine

Did anyone really think that the health police would be happy when smoking shrank to a few per cent of the population and a UK government promised to ban it for future generations altogether? Just try typing the phrase “worse than smoking” into Google and you can see that the bandwagon has moved on. Now it is anything from processed foods to sunbeds to loneliness to the mere act of sitting down.

But it is the anti-alcohol movement we really need to be watching. I don’t mean traditional temperance societies, which have been bravely battling to spread their word since the 19^th century and a few of which are still going. I have a respect for their open advocacy. It is the insidious nannies we really have to watch: the ones who are trying to change us by other means, by nudging us – some might say tricking us – into changing our drinking habits.

It is possible that you visited a pub or restaurant in the summer of 2022 and tried to order a large glass of wine – an order rebuffed by the waiting staff who told you that only small and medium glasses were now on offer. If you did, it has now become clear that you were a human guinea pig in a University of Cambridge study to see whether we could be enticed into drinking less by being deprived of large measures.

The study reports that overall sales of wine in the pubs and restaurants where the experiment took place fell by eight per cent during the trial period. As far as the study’s authors are concerned, it is proof that the nation’s health could be improved by limiting wine options. “It looks like when the largest serving size of glass was unavailable, people shifted towards the smaller options – but didn’t then drink the equivalent amount of wine,” says one. “It’s worth remembering that no level of alcohol consumption is considered safe for health,” says another.

There is another possible explanation: that customers couldn’t be doing with an establishment which wasn’t satisfying them with what they wanted – and took their custom elsewhere. But let’s leave that aside for a moment. It is the next bit which really gets me. Banning large glasses did not affect the pubs’ revenue, the paper went on to say, potentially because they make bigger profit margins on smaller glasses.

That is the nanny state for you in a nutshell. It is an unholy alliance between idealists and graspers. What restaurant wouldn’t want to sell us less wine for the same money if it thought it could get away with it? It is the same with moves to cut portion sizes, banning “two for one” deals, “king size” chocolate bars and so on. It is all supposed to stop us over-indulging – but it just so happens that it also gives the food and drink industry an opportunity to squeeze a bit more profit out of us.

Tell us the facts about smoking, drinking and over-eating, and how they affect our health. We can then make up our own minds. But please don’t try to “nudge” us into conforming to some harm reduction programme dreamed up by academics. That’s the kind of thing that makes me want to down a large glass of wine.

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