To understand the drumbeat for alcohol policy reform in the United States, you only have to know one figure: 29%. In just five years, between 2016 and 2021, annual alcohol-related deaths rose 29%, from 138,000 to 178,000 per year. That spike confirmed the sinking feelings public health and public safety advocates felt when state after state reacted to the economic impacts of COVID-19 by dramatic loosening long-standing laws surrounding alcohol sales, making more products available at a lower price with more immediacy than at any other time in our lifetimes.
The alarm over that development was not just heard within the research, policy, and advocacy communities. During 2024 year-end wrap-ups, SevenFifty Daily, a major alcohol industry news magazine, published “What Do Neo-Prohibitionists Really Want?” a rough overview of the push-and-pull between Big Alcohol and the many groups calling to reign in the death toll. As would be expected from the source, the piece elides major concerns that the industry would rather not confront. Importantly, however, it does not gloss over the 29% figure, identifying causes such as “barriers to treatment for alcohol use disorders [and] the loosening of alcohol policies at a state level.” Even the industry’s house is starting to fill with smoke.
It raises a fundamental question: what would make the industry make an earnest effort to reigning in spiraling deaths? The main concern among public health groups is that anything impacting sales will always be rejected out of hand. As the author writes, “For alcohol industry members [ . . . ] livelihood depends on its continued growth.” That growth-at-any-cost mentality has resulted in such deep entrenchment of alcohol deregulation that the public increasingly feels shocked—not only has it become nearly impossible to raise taxes to offset alcohol harms, but, since the pandemic, alcohol products saw the lowest rates of inflation of any grocery product.
After all, SevenFifty Daily has no compunctions calling the groups laboring to staunch the bleeding from alcohol deregulation a “movement.” It is based in community members, researchers, medical professionals, and organizers finding each other, and developing a voice that can be as loud as the industry’s, without the latter’s $260 billion in pocket. The power imbalance can be daunting, but if Big Alcohol refuses to budge on addressing alcohol harm, then something has to move.
READ MORE about the U.S. government’s struggle to fairly review alcohol harm.
READ MORE about the relentless tide of deregulatory alcohol policy in California.