In this edition of Entre Nous, we discuss how some French people are increasingly trying to abstain from alcohol for the entire month of January. However, this Dry January trend has encountered resistance from the nation's wine sector and the state. We punch the numbers of the economic contribution, but also the public health cost, of the French wine industry. Finally, we discover how no- and low-alcohol alternatives are booming.
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00:00France now for our Entre-Nous segment, and today we're focusing on the concept of dry January,
00:05or the push not to drink alcohol for the whole first month of the year. We're going to talk
00:10about that now with Solange Mougin, who joins me in the studio. Hi, Solange.
00:13Hi, Penny.
00:13So here in France, drinking alcohol, of course, is incredibly entwined with the cultural traditions
00:18of the country. So isn't there a conflict with dry January in France?
00:22There is and there isn't, or there can be at times, and that's what makes this so interesting.
00:28Are we as a society, as individuals, in the process of redefining the presence of alcohol
00:33in our lives? Studies and statistics show that many people are doing just that in France.
00:39According to the associations that back dry January here, but also elsewhere in the world,
00:44not drinking for a month has positive long-term effects that go way beyond just the month of
00:49January. Here in France, it is an increasingly popular trend, even if it is also a politically
00:55and an economically sticky one. More on that in a minute. Now, this year, an IFAP poll found that
01:01one in four, 17 million people, declared that they want to abstain from drinking for all of
01:06January in France. We're now at that halfway point of the month, so it'll be interesting to see how
01:11many have managed it and to see how they feel about not drinking. But nonetheless, the polls,
01:16they show that 12% of French drinkers are participating for the first time this year.
01:22And this illustrates a wider trend across France of people reassessing the presence of alcohol in
01:27their lives. Since the 1970s, the quantity that people are drinking here has been decreasing.
01:33Alcohol sales have dropped 70% in the past 60 years. For France, which is this paid vin or wine
01:39country, and is still actually the number two consumer of wine in the world, this is a big,
01:46albeit slow, shift. And there are helpers and hinders to the societal change. So you were
01:52talking about this economic and political stickiness. And I imagine, of course, it's
01:56because of the wine industry, which does carry a lot of weight in France. Yeah, the French wine,
02:00one of the French wine lobbies, Vin et Société, says that the industry generates nearly 92 billion
02:06euros in turnover every year and that it employs over 400,000 people. They also tout that they
02:12bring in some 6 billion euros in taxes to the state every year. And France is a major exporter,
02:20with France being the number one exporter in terms of monetary value, and number three in terms of
02:25quantity of wine. And that's just wine. That doesn't even touch on beer and the spirit sector.
02:30So, and perhaps I'm stating the obvious here, wine is a big deal economically and culturally
02:36in this country. But at the same time, there is also a cost, health-wise and economically.
02:41Alcohol is thought to kill some 42,000 people in France every year and to cause directly or
02:48indirectly some 60 illnesses. The French Observatory for Drugs and Addiction computed this two years
02:54ago, and they found that if you take into account the lost lives, add that to the public health
02:59costs, the loss of productivity, while subtracting as well the revenue from taxes and sales,
03:05well, alcohol costs 102 billion euros a year to the French economy. Those are the
03:11broad line financial figures. But societally, there is also this shift going on. The alcohol
03:17sector is in a crisis, and many argue that drinking is in the process of becoming less
03:22cool or of being reassessed along potentially the same lines that smoking was.
03:26So, what's driving this shift? I mean, is it public figures? Is it the government?
03:30Where is it coming from?
03:32Well, the assessment is largely being driven by scientific studies that are consistently
03:38showing how bad alcohol is for us. That plus a growing consciousness due to movements like
03:44Dry January, which actually began in the UK over a decade ago. In the United States, the Surgeon
03:49General's warning this month that alcohol is the third preventable cause of cancer after tobacco
03:55and obesity. That plus the warning that it causes 100,000 cancer deaths, cancer cases,
04:01rather, and directly causes 20,000 deaths each year in the U.S. These are cases in point of
04:07this growing alarm. Now, the call for cancer warnings to be added to alcoholic beverages
04:13was a surprise to many people, myself included. So, this begs the question of what role,
04:19be it in France or elsewhere, that public figures are playing in warning the public.
04:24Here in France, there has been some progress since consciousness of this came about
04:29in the 1970s. There are hotlines, there are public service announcements.
04:33There is a slogan that most everyone here in France knows, en moderation, only in moderation.
04:39And the guidelines in France are currently two units of a standard glass per day and no more
04:45than 10 a week. But is that too lenient? And is the state doing enough to warn people? Well,
04:51the World Health Organization says no consumption at all is safe, and many health and addiction
04:57associations and politicians say that Emmanuel Macron is a pro-drinking president. He was
05:02actually named Person of the Year by a wine review, and many actually accuse him of working
05:07too closely with members of the lobby. They also accuse him of conflicts of interest,
05:11of pulling prevention campaigns, and scrapping in 2019 a plan to back dry January, despite the fact
05:18that the French government does back the tobacco version of it of no smoking in November.
05:24So there's criticism on the health officials on the one hand, not doing enough to warn people.
05:29There's a growing consciousness amongst the population as well. I mean, I have to ask,
05:33like, Solange, where do you fit in all of this? Are you doing dry January?
05:37This is my big disclaimer of the day. I am trying to do dry January.
05:41I cheated a tiny little bit at a party. There was champagne and a grand vin.
05:45But so far, so good. And I'm discovering non-alcoholic alternatives, which is actually
05:51a sector that is beginning to boom here in France and also elsewhere. The IWSR,
05:56which gathers statistics on beverages, they say that the no or low alcohol drink sector
06:02is expected to grow by four billion in the next three years, and that it's already actually
06:07started to grow drastically in France, France being one of its biggest markets with the highest
06:13number of new recruits worldwide, thanks mainly to young people, which means that alcohol may be
06:19out, but the tradition, the strong cultural tradition of l'apéro may not be.
06:24Yeah, I don't think anyone's ever going to stop doing apéro,
06:27even if they do it with a soft drink. Why not?
06:28Yes, exactly.
06:29Solange Mugen, thank you so much for that look at dry January. And good luck to all of you,
06:32if any of you out there are sticking with dry January as well.
06:36Coming up for you now on France