Two Presidents ago, political appointees engaged in behavior that didn't make much sense(1) and had no benefit for public health. For example, they declared there was an epidemic of something they invented called "pre-diabetes" and insisted that smoking cessation tools that were twice as effective as gums and patches but were not controlled by Big Pharma, plus cigars and pipes that have never killed anyone, were an epidemic in kids.
One thing President Obama's team of social authoritarians never took on was alcohol. Cigarettes, sure, even though Obama smoked them, but not alcohol.
The argument to squash vaping was that nicotine is addictive and flavors made them more appealing. Except nicotine is not a carcinogen and never has been, only inhaling smoke is. Yet the addictive chemical that has added flavors to make it more appealing and is a carcinogen, nearly every alcoholic drink in existence, went unchallenged.
Smirnoff is going to need more than celebrities promoting nonsense about a gluten-free non-GMO carcinogen if young people have finally gotten the message that killing brain cells is bad.
It's almost like public health was not a concern at all, it was just that too many Democrats like booze.
Wine sales have plummeted to such an extent that farmers are plowing under vineyards. They can't spend $20,000 per field and have grapes turn into raisins. Wine experts say the big reason is Bidenflation. The cost of bread going up 44% while Democrats bragged about the stock market did not resonate with the poor, but inflation causes all boat costs to rise, and the middle class that bought wine bought a lot less because of the increased cost; 3.2 billion bottles less in 2023.
Democrats said farmers were just greedy corporations engaged in price-gouging, inflation was not happening, and any claim otherwise was Fascism. Political hacks under the veil of science who suddenly care about pro-science positioning now that Trump got elected can side with their political leaders and claim poor people are just being crybabies about the cost of food but a third possibility exists.
Maybe young people are just smarter than previous generations.
Since we began in 2007, one thing we have consistently noted is that alcohol is the most dangerous popular chemical out there. Democrats are always ban-happy about everything from golf to weedkillers to Happy Meals but never took on the most toxic chemical in the world. Where are those Canadian PhDs slamming American poor people for caring about "public health infrastructure" more than feeding their kids when it comes to ending casual acceptance of the problems with alcohol? It's almost like most pundits who claim to be pro-science don't care until they are told to care. Like with vaccines since 2021 and their side stopped being the country's lead in denial.
Young people have gotten the message we have sent that alcohol is bad. They have already turned away from Boomer Environmentalism that makes no sense, like banning everything unless it won't work, such as solar and wind and corn ethanol, and they have turned away from politically-driven public health expertise after seeing how badly career employees inside CDC botched COVID-19 response;they watched fifth columnists inside government more interested in protecting China's government than protecting Americans.
That 10 percent fewer people drink alcohol than a generation ago, which itself is a lot less than Gen X and Baby Boomers, may be that Bidenflation has hit them nearly as hard as it hit the poor, or it may be that there is a new fad, the way vaping was in young people for a brief time, but it could be what Democrats have long said is the reason they control academia - young people are 'just f--king smarter.'
If that is true, less alcohol, along with continued declines in cigarettes thanks to our work educating people, could mean a big boost in public health and declines in spending. If cigarettes and booze go away, the big lifestyle killer will be obesity and that is a much easier problem to solve.
NOTE:
(1) Democrats trying to put warning labels on GMOs, putting anti-nuclear activists in charge of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, overruling scientists when they made awkward approval determinations that Democrats opposed, like Keystone XL, and cozy pre-arranged sue-and-settle agreements with activists to get regulations that acted as laws enacted using "Chevron Deference" in agencies was, however, completely expected. Back then, Democrats were opposed to science, even if they tried to gloss it over as "anti-business." Once "business" and the Trump administration fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccines, which Democrats opposed because it was going to risk lives, they said, and they won the election, they became pro-vaccine.
And Republicans flipped to opposing the vaccines they had created. Really, he is a loon, but the only consistent person in politics is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He hated them when he was a Democrat, like he hates cell phones and affordable energy, and still does even as he hopes to get an important job in the Trump administration that will never happen.