The most popular dating site of this month: French wine-growers celebrate after country’s leaders ditch plans to promote Dry January. French wine-growers are toasting their country’s politicians – after they binned plans for Dry January.
Ministers quietly ditched the new year health drive after wine producers pushed President Emmanuel Macron to drop a campaign they say promotes ‘total abstinence’.
Health minister Agnes Buzyn admitted that no talks on Dry January, initially set for next year, would be held until a key health prevention meeting in February.
Anti-drinking groups blamed the U-turn on lobbying by the Association of Vine and Wine Elected Representatives.
‘The campaign is being developed,’ Buzyn told Franceinfo radio, adding that she would have to sign off on a Dry January, ‘but that’s not necessarily the format we’ll decide on.’
France has the third-highest per capita consumption of alcohol among the 36 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to a report from the club of wealthy nations this month.
Alcohol results in 41,000 deaths in France each year, according to France’s Public Health Agency, which urges people to limit themselves to two glasses a day – ‘and not every day.’
But Macron – who once proclaimed ‘I drink wine at lunch and dinner!’ – reportedly told winemakers in the Champagne region earlier this month that they had nothing to worry about.
‘He told us, ‘You can let people know there won’t be any Dry January’,’ Maxime Toubart, president of the Champagne growers’ association, told the Vitisphere industry website.
The plan took its inspiration from the Dry January launched by the British association Alcohol Change in 2013, which has proven increasingly popular as people take a break from imbibing after the holiday festivities.
The French health ministry already sponsors a smoke-free November to raise awareness over the risks of tobacco.
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