Deep Thinkers Put Their Heads Together on Global Alcohol Policy

Sometimes important, deep thinkers and important organizations say things or make recommendations that are completely ignored. That’s often a bad thing. But sometimes it’s a good thing, especially if the thing being said or recommended is so crazy it deserves to be ignored.

Enter the World Health Organization, a pretty serious organization.

To quote from their Draft Global Alcohol Action Plan 2022-2030:

“Appropriate attention should be given to the prevention of the initiation of drinking among children and adolescents, prevention of drinking among pregnant women and women of childbearing age”

There has been some discussion in the media and among a number of health researchers of WHO’s apparent recommendation that women between 16 and 50 refrain from drinking alcohol. But not much attention has been paid by rank and file drinkers and the alcohol trade.

Maybe the reason not too much attention has been paid to this recommendation that women of child-bearing age not drink at all is that folks took the WHO’s recommendation and gave “appropriate attention” to the idea.

The other reason there has been little attention paid to this industry-killing suggestion by WHO, I think, is because no one believes any country is going to stand by this kind of recommendation and ask their women of childbearing age to stop drinking. On the one hand, the recommendation would not be followed. On the other hand, few government officials in charge of speaking from a bully pulpit of any size want to be caught appearing so utterly insane.

I’m not sure what the mandate is of the WHO, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t to appear more stupid than Holocaust deniers and contestants on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. However, it is impressive that, in today’s politically polarized world, the WHO could succeed in uniting everyone on the political spectrum.

Granted this is the “first draft” of the WHO’s Global Alcohol Action Plan 2022-2030. It will go through some revision before the final Plan is officially released to the world. But you have to have a really incurious mind to not wish you were in the room when some member of some WHO committee first voiced the idea that, “I think the plan should recommend global abstention from alcohol for the majority of women on the earth.”

It’s not because you want to hear how this idea was broached in that committee. You want to have been in that room to see what the other participants’ faces looked liked as they responded with, “Hey, that’s a good idea!”

 

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2 Responses

  1. Donn Rutkoff - June 20, 2021

    This confirms that everybody at the WHO is a Harvard Graduate, as per Ben Franklin, Dogood letter #4, in the New – England Courant, May 14, 1722.

    ” I reflected in my Mind on the extream Folly of those Parents, who, blind to their Childrens Dulness, and insensible of the Solidity of their Skulls, because they think their Purses can afford it, will needs send them to the Temple of Learning, where, for want of a suitable Genius, they learn little more than how to carry themselves handsomely, and enter a Room genteely, . . . I related my Dream … . . . he, without much Study, presently interpreted it, assuring me, That it was a lively Representation of Harvard College, ”

    In 1722. Written by a 16 year old. Still applies today.

    The ego. Huge. The brain. Not so huge. When will it ever end?

  2. acv - June 21, 2021

    I believe the term for women now is “gestational carriers”. I’ve been led to believe that the sanitary product makers are already referring to women as “Menstruators, Bleeders, Breeders, and Vagina-havers” so, the WHO may want to adopt less sexist and misogynistic terms for their final draft.

    One more opportunity not to learn from history??… unless you are following the history of Margret Atwood’s novel?? Sadly, the target generation of millennials is such sheep they may just abide by the WHO recommendation.

    What’s most surprising by the WHIO “draft proposal” is knowing there may likely be a backlash….why didn’t they just say “Menstruators of childbearing age that CHOOSE to drink will lose social points”…none of this half-ass CCP stuff…just go all in.


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