With sharpened hair and bedazzled sunglasses, Guy Fieri strolls through a breezy glimpse of the San Diego dream. There’s a sapphire sparkle on the harbor water. There’s a Capri blue clearness in the sky. California sunlight is brightening the palms, sailing yachts, and eucalyptus trees that run along the Embarcadero. Fieri sees it all through the morning window glare of the Hilton Bayfront Hotel.
The chef, restaurateur, and television host is ready to talk agave.
Fieri is speaking at an event for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) and Women of the Vine & Spirits. In his laid-back style, “the Mayor of Flavortown” starts recounting how his unbreakable bond with rock icon Sammy Hagar led to the pair launching Santo Tequila. He’s all charm, smiles, and energy, though when it’s time for questions from the audience, one person grabbing the mic triggers a pause in his sunny demeanor. Fieri is asked about how rising food costs, continued inflation, declining consumer confidence, and a recent 3 percent slump in overall alcohol sales could affect a fragile restaurant landscape that’s still recovering from the pandemic.
“We should be terrified,” he replies bluntly. “If you have a restaurant you love, please become their cheerleader.”
Some forces battering hospitality are beyond anyone’s control. The decline in alcohol sales and consumption, however, might be a different story. According to a report from Gallup last year, young adults in the U.S. are drinking less than the generations before them, and noticeably fewer people that age are drinking regularly.
“Gallup’s latest update on Americans’ drinking habits, from a July 3–27 poll, found a marked increase from earlier readings in Americans’ belief that even moderate drinking is bad for one’s health,” the report stated.
While most in the spirits industry make efforts to combat underage drinking, reckless decisions, and harmful overconsumption, the question of what exactly is casting a pall on responsible alcohol habits with young Americans is now an obvious one.
So, too, is the issue of whether these generational fears are even based in science.
“No,” says Dr. Amanda Berger, a public health researcher who’s been tracking how groups driven by a modern temperance movement are influencing the conversation.
The message from these anti-alcohol evangelists ignores the best data and gold standard studies around moderate consumption, though it’s nonetheless being parroted and platformed by a surprising number of journalists. And that’s having an impact on Gen Z, who just spent three years of the pandemic getting hit with a firehose of media signals about their personal health. As the Gallup report indicates, the sermons of neo-prohibitionists — and sympathetic reporters and public health officials — are resonating.
If this trend of misinformation getting young people to swear off alcohol continues, it won’t just be the purveyors of beer, wine, and spirits who feel the brunt of it: The bias will send devastating shockwaves through the entire restaurant industry, prompting food costs to rise even more, which will lead to more customers staying home and more establishments closing. In the end, countless cooks, servers, and mom-and-pop business owners could be hit hard.
That’s a reality Fieri is making clear as he speaks to his audience at the Bayfront.
“I don’t want the wine sale out of the guest, I need that wine sale out of the guests,” Fieri warns. “If I don’t have that in the mix, do you know how expensive that steak is going to be? That steak is going to be 20 percent more expensive… The real hinge-point to success or failure is going to be that alcohol beverage program.”
A World of Questions
It’s a mild night on the San Diego Bay as Erlinda Doherty walks by tussling vines and torchlight that glimmers on cactuses studding a patio. She soon arrives at the upper floor of Puesto where members of Women of the Vine & Spirits are tasting its gorgeously arranged fish tacos and pairing them against icy honeydew margaritas stirred with Mezcal Verde Amarás. Doherty can see that the bartenders at Puesto have channeled Baja California’s vibe into every touch of their mixology.
The spirits industry has always embraced sharing connections through heritage and cultural appreciation. But tonight, Doherty is thinking about one international body that isn’t celebrating those links anymore — at least not in terms of drinking traditions.
Around 2020, the World Health Organization, or WHO, began altering its approach to advising the public on alcohol. Historically, the organization’s mission involved reducing the adverse impacts of risky behavior and addiction. However, it has become evident from draft documents released by WHO that its mandate is evolving. WHO appears no longer focused on alcohol-related harm reduction, but rather on encouraging people around the globe to not drink at all. Doherty, who has a master’s degree in public policy and consults in the wine and spirits industries, continues to track these developments with growing unease. She was definitely surprised when WHO made its new position official in January of 2023 with the release of a statement claiming that there is no “safe” level of alcohol consumption.
WHO soon upped the stakes around this position by issuing a guide for journalists that advised them to consciously present any alcohol-rated coverage through the ‘no safe level’ framing.
“It’s concerning how fast the pace has been when it comes to labeling alcohol as this horrible demon of an item,” Doherty says. “There’s been a lot more press in that direction lately, and it’s landing in the mainstream now. The New York Times ran a piece about how Ireland labeled alcohol a carcinogen, a piece asking out loud, ‘Should we be doing the same thing?’ Some journalists are being convinced to move away from separating healthy consumption from harmful consumption — and they’re landing on demonizing any consumption, period.”
The World Health Organization is not hiding who its advising partners are, either. Six years ago, while launching its SAFER initiative, WHO acknowledged it was working with Movendi International, a global temperance movement group that has a historic lineage to the forces behind U.S. Prohibition in 1920. According to Movendi’s website, it was founded in Utica, New York, in 1851 as the Independent Order of Good Templars. Movendi boasts that, back then, its members played a significant role in “the Women’s Crusade of 1873–74,” which was a social campaign to pressure politicians toward contemplating what would eventually become the Volstead Act.
“The crusade sought to persuade saloon-keepers to destroy their beverages, close their doors, and enter some other line of business,” the history page on Movendi’s website reads. “In the course of a year, almost 1,000 protest marches were organized, with peak participation of 143,000 women.”
Movendi’s recounting of this crusade doesn’t mention that it was soon followed by Carrie Nation storming into saloons as she smashed bottles with hatchets like a deranged zealot, nor does it reference that Prohibition empowered organized crime and triggered bloodshed while fueling the incarceration of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Prohibition also contributed to unemployment and huge declines in tax revenue on the eve of the Great Depression.
So, what is WHO using to justify the platforming of Movendi’s message?
According to Dr. Berger, who is vice president of science and health at DISCUS, the answer is one outlying and outdated study that doesn’t match the broader body of scientific knowledge.
“The ‘no safe level of alcohol’ message has been popping up in social media campaigns, but we’ve also seen some similar comments coming from Dr. Tedros, [Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus], who is the director-general for WHO,” Berger observes. “And in all of those cases, they are either not citing anything, or they’re citing this one 2018 Global Burden of Disease study.”
A specific section of that study focuses on all-cause mortality related to alcohol.
“Historically, those reports have always demonstrated a J-curve,” Berger goes on. “Meaning that, on average, people who are light-to-moderate drinkers live statistically significantly much longer than excessive drinkers, and at least as long — or longer — than nondrinkers. But in 2018, their update came out, and for the first time, the conclusion was that they actually couldn’t identify a level of alcohol consumption that they would call safe. And that has been what the anti-alcohol activists have really pointed to ever since.”
But there is one big problem with that, Berger adds: The 2022 update to the Global Burden of Disease included newer data that went right back to the historic J-curve. This study, in fact, had an improved methodology over the 2018 findings, one that looked at alcohol through the prisms of sub-populations, including by gender, age group, and region.
And yet, WHO has not retracted its influential guide for journalists or walked back its public comments.
“That 2022 article came out, and the anti-alcohol advocates and WHO still pointed to the 2018 article, because that was what supported the ‘no safe level’ narrative,” Berger explains. “I do think, unfortunately, that ideology and not science is starting to drive a lot of the narrative.”
Challenges at Home
It is Father’s Day in the California Delta as cars drive down levee roads that turn along splashing sloughs, weathered docks, and lonely marinas half-hidden in cattails. Most vehicles are loaded with families heading straight for Sabbatical Distillery with its crops and orchards that sprawl across Victoria Island.
The operation is a fourth-generation homestead. Jack Zech, whose great-grandfather mastered the islet’s agriculture, is now watching children descend on Sabbatical’s parking lot. With blueberry season at its peak, kids are eagerly pulling their moms into the field in order to pick as many basketfuls as they can. In some cases, their fathers are peeling off to walk over to the galvanized barn that is Sabbatical’s barrel house and tasting room. A number of young ladies have also shown up with their dads in tow, deciding that a distillery tour is a fun way to honor Father’s Day.
Zech and Sabbatical’s co-founder Daniel Leonard are pouring for patrons, leading tours, and letting kids sample blueberry lemonade, flavored pistachios, and honey made by bees on the island.
“When we started, the whole idea was providing a connection to where ingredients are grown and the whole ecosystem of where food and drinks come from,” Leonard says. “It was about the experiential and educational element that comes with that; and, just by the nature of it, the business appeals to more than just people looking to drink, but also people interested in agriculture or urban escape to a unique farm like this.”
The neo-prohibitionists certainly don’t credit distilleries like this with helping families make lasting memories. They also don’t acknowledge the amount of philanthropic work the craft spirits industry is involved with. But Sheena Kawakami, who’s watching kids hurry around with their berry baskets as she sips Sabbatical’s lemon-infused vodka, does know about how invested the alcohol producers are in various communities. Kawakami works with distilleries, breweries, and wineries on fundraising events for the Special Olympics.
“I can’t say enough about how generous the people in these industries are,” Kawakami remarks. “Obviously, they can’t afford to give free product to every single group that asks, but in my experience, they focus their attention where they think they can make a difference — and they do that all the time.”
With details like this missing from the abstentionists’ preaching, Movendi’s message is still filtering through to governments on some level. For craft producers, the knowledge of that is even more disturbing when paired with comments from officials like Dr. George Koob of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Koob is the director of the agency’s division on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. While Koob has publicly admitted to The New York Times in 2023 that “we did Prohibition, it didn’t work,” he also told USA Today in the following month that even small amounts of alcohol were risky to a person’s health. Koob’s statement came right as the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans were under review. Those guidelines currently advise that, for those who choose to drink, it’s safe for men to have two drinks a day and for women to have one.
“These guidelines have been consistent for 40 years and continue to be supported by the evidence reviews throughout that time,” Berger says. “So, this message that Dr. Koob sent to consumers, and to Americans, was potentially signaling a change. And he referenced following the lead of Canada.”
Two years ago, the Canadian Center of Substance Abuse advised the Canadian government to change its alcohol recommendations from 15 drinks a week for men and 10 drinks a week for women, to just two drinks a week for either.
“That’s the equivalent of a couple of tablespoons of wine a day,” Berger points out. “That’s what Koob’s talking about when he references moving in the direction of Canada. The government of Canada has not implemented those changes; but that’s been misreported because folks in that CCSA group have been very vocal to the media — and there’s now news stories that suggest those are the new guidelines.”
For Berger, members of DISCUS, and consultants like Doherty, fighting and correcting misinformation like that has become paramount for anyone working in beer, wine, spirits — or the restaurant industry. The mantra emerging at San Diego’s conference when it came to these storm clouds on the horizon was direct: “educate, educate, educate.”
