CAN SIR? NO THANKS, I'LL HAVE A BOTTLE

Hello readers.

This is the first post for The Wine Curmudgeon pending my acceptance into The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ.

The Wine Curmudgeon will operate under licence to The Wine Guy.

The reason for this is to free up The Wine Guy to write more serious posts about wine and the drinks industry.

The Wine Curmudgeon will publish quick posts about alcohol that are in keeping with the spirit of The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ ( irascibility, grumpiness, peevishness, disgruntlement and curmudgeonliness in general).

Another, more prosaic reason is that The Wine Guy operates under another email address and it's a fankle having to log out and log in again when posting.

Here's something that fits the bill.

Should alcoholic beverages have cancer warning labels?

Examples of labels that will be added in 2026 to containers of all beer, wine and liquor sold in Ireland, emphasising the ties between alcohol use and liver disease or cancer. Photo / Alcohol Action Ireland via The New York Times

Ireland will require them starting in 2026, and there are nascent efforts elsewhere to add more explicit labelling about the health risks of drinking.

Fifteen words are roiling the global alcohol industry.

Beginning in 2026, containers of beer, wine and liquor sold in Ireland will be required by law to bear a label in red capital letters with two warnings: “There Is a Direct Link Between Alcohol and Fatal Cancers” and “Drinking Alcohol Causes Liver Disease.”

The requirement, signed into law last year, is backed by decades of scientific research and goes much further than any country has thus far communicated the health risks of alcohol consumption. It has sparked fierce opposition from alcohol businesses worldwide, but it is also inspiring a push in some other countries to pursue similar measures.

“It’s an important step,” said Dr Timothy Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria. “People who drink should have the right to know basic information about alcohol, just as they do for other food and beverage products.”


In Thailand, the government is in the final stages of drafting a regulation requiring alcohol products to carry graphic images accompanied by text warnings such as “alcoholic beverages can cause cancer,” according to The Bangkok Post.
The requirement, signed into law last year, is backed by decades of scientific research and goes much further than any country has thus far communicated the health risks of alcohol consumption. 

A bill has been introduced in the Canadian Parliament that would require labels on all alcoholic beverages to communicate a “direct causal link between alcohol consumption and the development of fatal cancers.”

Last week, the Alaska Legislature held a committee hearing on a bill that would require businesses selling alcohol to post signs carrying a cancer warning.

Norway, which already heavily regulates the sale of alcohol, is developing proposals for introducing cancer warning labels. The country’s state secretary, Ole Henrik Krat Bjorkholt, who followed Ireland’s effort with great interest, said in an interview, “I think it’s probable that we will implement something similar.”

Ireland has been a trailblazer in setting aggressive public health policies before. In 2004, it became the first country to ban smoking in indoor workplaces, including bars and restaurants, a policy since adopted in more than 70 countries. The warning label requirement for alcohol could be the start of a similar change in how beverages are packaged, and a vehicle for raising awareness about the dangers of drinking, however small the amount.

        New York Times By Ted Alcorn 

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Now I'm all for sensible restrictions on the production, sale and marketing of alcohol but I do get a bit pissed off at the levels that some people want to take this. There are already compulsory warning messages and mandatory bits of information on bottles to the point where fitting all these and information on the beer, wine or spirit is becoming difficult.

Putting the proposed cancer warnings on is just over the top.

We know that there are risks with drinking alcohol but so are there risks in using or consuming most everyday things in life.

Yesterday I had an annual check-up with my GP and one of the questions of course was alcohol consumption. I told her it's still about the same - about 3 bottles of wine a week to which she said - "me too". We laughed and I reminded her of my time when I had that stroke 6 years ago. In hospital a nurse aide gathering information asked how much alcohol I normally consumed. Being familiar with the drinks industry legislation and terminology and the use of 'standard drinks' measurement (a bottle of chardonnay for example has approximately 8 standard drinks) I said - about 24 standard drinks a week. She wrote this down on her form as 24 bottles of wine a week! Subsequently along with other medications to control my blood pressure, atrial fibrillation and cholesterol I was prescribed Thiamine Hydrochloride. It didn't mean anything to me and so I took it daily. A couple of weeks afterwards my sister, a GP checked on what medication I was taking and was surprised at theThiamine Hydrochloride. "WTF!" she exclaimed "this is for alcoholics to try and wean them off drinking." I told her of the questionnaire that they had filled out and yes, sure enough they all thought I was getting through two cases of wine a week. "Mon Dieu" I said "they think that I'm Gerard Depardieu!"

Gerard Depardieu, French actor, said to consume a dozen bottles of wine a day

She had the the thiamine cancelled and I continue to consume 2 to 3 bottles of wine a week.

Alcohol consumption, to me is something that people should take personal responsibility for. I know, I know, some people need help as they 'have the gene' that leads them to alcoholism - we've all, I'm sure had friends or family members with the affliction. Like cigarette smoking though, we've had many decades of health reporting on the detrimental effect that over-consumption has and also in more recent times have had warnings of the effects of any amount of alcohol on cognition, health and well-being. To this end I use my own common sense (as yet tot totally addled by alcohol) and don't need government agencies telling me, via a label on a bottle what I should or shouldn't do.