The drinks industry is bracing for its ‘tobacco moment’, it has warned, as health authorities escalate their warnings about alcohol consumption. For retailers and suppliers already navigating challenging market conditions, this represents more than regulatory inconvenience – it threatens the fundamental structure of a category worth billions to UK grocery.
The World Health Organization’s declaration “there is no safe amount [of alcohol] that does not affect health” represents a dangerous assault on evidence-based policy and consumer choice. This absolutist stance, first published in The Lancet Public Health in January 2023, signalled the beginning of a co-ordinated attack on moderate alcohol consumption using tactics lifted directly from anti-tobacco campaigns.
The ‘tobacco playbook’ refers to a systematic regulatory approach. It begins with health warnings on packaging, then escalates to comprehensive advertising bans, plain packaging requirements, and punitive taxation. This strategy transforms legitimate businesses into pariahs through regulatory pressure and marketing restrictions.
The playbook’s power lies in its incremental nature: each restriction creates a precedent for the next, making it difficult to recognise the full scope of control being implemented until it’s too late to resist effectively.
We’ve already seen similar actions unfold across the food industry: advertising restrictions on HFSS products, calls for mandatory reformulation targets and punitive tax hikes. All of these interventions drive manufacturers towards regulatory compliance rather than consumer-led innovation. What begins as public health concern evolves into comprehensive industry control.
Organic shift
Yet the WHO’s position ignores a fundamental reality: consumers are already shifting organically toward moderation. Recent Portman Group data shows 38% of UK drinkers now consume low and no-alcohol products semi-regularly, up from 35% in 2023 and 29% in 2022.
Among 25 to 34-year-olds, nearly half (46%) consider themselves occasional or regular consumers of alcohol alternatives. The youngest adults are leading this trend, with 40% of 18 to 24-year-olds drinking low/no-alcohol products regularly while 39% abstain entirely.
The Portman Group data also shows 24% of drinkers have reduced consumption specifically due to low/no-alcohol alternatives, with 29% citing health concerns as motivation.
Despite this encouraging evidence, the WHO dismisses decades of nuanced research on moderate consumption. What we’re witnessing is the systematic deployment of the tobacco regulatory playbook. In February, the organisation demanded “cancer-related health information messages on labels of alcoholic beverages, following the example of tobacco products”. By declaring no safe level exists, regulators create justification for unlimited intervention.
Financial devastation
The financial devastation awaiting the industry is staggering. Brand Finance’s 2024 alcoholic drinks report reveals enormous wealth at stake. Its analysis showed alcohol companies like AB InBev, Diageo and Heineken face 100% revenue exposure, with potential brand contribution losses exceeding £214bn across just nine major companies.
Marketing restrictions and plain packaging devastate companies’ ability to differentiate products, causing brand contribution to collapse. Smaller producers will be eliminated entirely as they will unable to absorb regulatory costs. That will lead to market consolidation, concentrating power among the largest multinationals.
The irony is profound: just as consumers embrace moderation voluntarily, regulators prepare to impose restrictions that will destroy the industry innovation enabling this positive trend. Low & no-alcohol products require significant investment in research and development. Crippling the industry through tobacco-style restrictions will eliminate resources needed to develop these alternatives.
The WHO’s “no safe limit” position represents ideology masquerading as science. The market is already working: consumers are moderating voluntarily. We must resist this overreach before it eliminates consumer choice, destroys innovation, and treats every adult as incapable of personal responsibility.
Mike Coppen-Gardner is founder and CEO of SPQR
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