The US Surgeon General has called for the placing of warning labels on alcoholic beverages. If the great minds of government have their way, drinkers will soon be reminded that the consumption of alcohol poses a number of health risks, including increased odds for various kinds of cancer. Alcohol is now our third leading preventable cause of cancer, after tobacco and obesity.
As I have noted in this space in the past, I am a near teetotaler. I’ve had perhaps three alcoholic beverages since the beginning of this century. I haven’t been drunk since New Year’s Eve 1986.
My reasons are neither religious nor moral. I don’t like alcohol, and it doesn’t like me. Two drinks make me mildly nauseous. More than three, and I’m upchucking. My last hangover, thirty-eight years ago, plunged me into absolute misery. And that was when I still had the resilience of a late teen.
There have also been instances of alcoholism in my family. The curse of the Irish. My great grandfather made my maternal grandmother’s childhood an ordeal with his drinking.
And yet…I know plenty of people who responsibly enjoy the occasional glass of bourbon, pizza and beer while watching football, a glass of wine with a fine steak. Just because alcohol has been a negative experience for me, and a scourge for some members of my family, doesn’t give me the right to make your decisions for you.
And yet, I have no doubt that all things being equal, no one’s life would be made worse if everyone were a teetotaler. Teetotaling has worked for me for almost 40 years, after all.
But if the government is going to put warnings on bottles of wine and beer, why not put them on boxes of frozen pizzas and Little Debbies, too?
I live in Ohio, one of the nation’s statistically fatter states. When I visit my local Walmart, I see a lot of people carrying fifty pounds of extra weight. Considerably more, anyway, than are stumbling around drunk. I would furthermore bet that my local Walmart sells a lot more junk food than alcohol.
Politicians seek easy targets and low-hanging fruit. And no target hangs as low and as easy as any form of vice: alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, and sex. No politician will ever argue for a warning label on sugar-laden snack cakes, because the overreaching hand of government would be out in the open. But argue for a warning label on Coors Light, and, well, now you’re onto something.
I have no desire to drink alcohol, ever again. But I know plenty of drinkers. They will not be dissuaded by a government-imposed label on alcoholic beverages. Everyone already knows that alcoholic beverages are bad for you. But the resolve to stop drinking (or to never start in the first place) is a decision that must be made at the individual level.
Similarly, everyone knows that obesity is unhealthy, the warblings of the body-positivity crowd notwithstanding. But obesity, like alcohol, is unlikely to be defeated by yet another gesture from the nanny state.
-ET