Beer is more than just a drink, it can bring people together, claims Dolf van den Brink, CEO of Heineken. Speaking to the Financial Times, he said that in an era where isolation and mental health challenges are the new normal, beer’s qualities as a “social lubricant” could be a key part of discussions about alcohol.
Heineken boss on ‘social role’ of beer
On Thursday, the Dutch brewing giant announced a five-year plan aimed at boosting beer sales. Like many alcohol producers, the company has struggled with weaker consumer demand in recent years. Shares have dropped by a fifth compared to their 2023 peak. “In this time of loneliness and a mental health epidemic, beer’s role in bringing people together is important to make part of the public debate,” van den Brink told FT a day after.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) beer and other alcoholic beverages are not considered safe for health. In a 2023 statement, the WHO claimed that even small or “moderate” amounts of alcohol can be harmful. Alcohol is classified as a “carcinogen,” meaning it can cause cancer, and no safe limit exists.
At a time when health authorities around the world are warning about alcohol risks, Heineken claims that moderate drinking also has a social purpose. According to Brink, the relationship between alcohol and health is complex and deserves a balanced conversation. “We do believe that it’s not always reported in a balanced way,” he said, adding, “because the relationship between alcohol and health is complex.”
The company’s CEO gave historical examples of people drinking beer together in Mesopotamia and Egypt, showing that beer has long been a part of social life. “Beer is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, consumer goods category,” he said. Heineken now also offers non-alcoholic beers, giving people a way to enjoy social moments without consuming alcohol. Keeping urban loneliness in mind, especially in crowded cities, the company has launched “Rooftop Revival,” events that turn unused rooftops into lively social spaces. “There is a legitimate debate in society now about the effect of moderate consumption of alcohol, including beer, on health. And again, we believe that needs to be a balanced and nuanced discussion,” he told FT.
What the WHO says about beer and alcohol
According to the World Heath Organisation, risks associated with alcohol include: Certain types of cancer (such as breast, liver, and colon cancer), Heart disease and stroke, Liver cirrhosis, Mental health disorders, etc.
“Alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago, this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco,” WHO said in a statement.
Here is a thought, feel free to shoot it down:
Many governments are jacking up prices on alcohol, for the obvious health detriments. Instead of doing it across the board, they could make take home alcohol cost significantly more, but bar/pub/restaurant alcohol significantly cheaper, on the understanding that its a lot harder to problem drink in a public place with a bartender who will cut you off.
It would encourage moderated drinking in social places, discourage excessive home drinking. Doesnt completely solve the health issues though.
I’d support this with a huge caveat: it would probably only work in a place not reliant on cars. Otherwise it sounds like a recipe for a drastic increase in drunk driving accidents
Very true. I'd like to beleive establishments are cutting people off and taking active steps to prevent drink driving, but thats definitely naive.
TLDR: Cars are the real problem here, not bars. I hyper focused on this, so it got a little long, but I swear it’s not AI, I just like to write with dashes.
It’s also not really fair to ask bartenders to accurately assess inebriation for large numbers of customers. Legal limits vary, but 0.05-0.08% BAC doesn’t normally make a relatively experienced drinker (not a euphemism for alcoholics, but not 19 year olds or people who never have more than enough to toast) slur or seem even obviously tipsy- similarly, long term alcoholics can seem sober with a BAC of 0.15%. It might be more accurate to judge it based on approximate size and just use a table, but that’s no help for people who recently donated blood or didn’t have dinner. I know that sounds like nitpicking, but I do remember kids in college donating blood together and then going out so they wouldn’t need to spend as much money getting drunk, and skipping dinner to get drunk faster/cheaper was super common for most of my acquaintance circle until our mid twenties (I’m not even really a drinker, so it wasn’t huge for my closest friends, but it’s something people would mention doing pretty regularly).
One possible solution would be to have a breathalyzer with an easily disinfected mouthpiece installed in bars, so that people would realize how much alcohol they actually have in their systems, but that could also be disastrous if improperly calibrated (and even if not, a person with a BAC of 0.04% who’s never had alcohol before is probably not good to drive, but it puts the bartender in an awkward spot to cut them off before they’re over the limit, especially if their boss is shitty). I could see bars tuning them to be more sensitive as a marketing and protective strategy, but if people didn’t think they could trust the results, it would be pointless.
I think we’re looking at the problem the wrong way though- the bars are not as big a problem as the lacking infrastructure, and trying to bandage problems from our reliance on cars through bars is inadequate.
All that is to say, I agree that this is a good idea in places with good non car infrastructure, and places without it should look at implementing it before subsidizing alcohol from restaurants and bars. Especially considering that the initial problem is social isolation, which is only compounded by car centric infrastructure
You can get breathalysers that use straws for mouth pieces. I think they are used in workplaces (mines etc)?
But ideally, much better to have proper infrastructure alternatives. 0.05 is the legal limit, its not the same as the "safe" level.
Just to mention, that legal limit can vary wildly between US States, and based on what youre driving. Commercial driving across most US states is .04, while most of Europe is stricter with a .02 (or even a .00 in a few).
Most states its a .08, though I think one or two are at .05.
I'm Australian, we go with 0.05, I think commercial is zero though.
Read up on Prohibition in the US.
People were drinking 'bathtub gin' and paint thinner.
Alcohol can be addicting, and alcoholics without treatment will always find a way to get what they need.
Ken Bruen [Irish mystery writer] once said that an alcoholic is someone who finds himself getting up earlier and earlier so he can get nicely lit before the bars open.
Im not proposing full prohibition, just that bar alcohol should be cheaper than home.
Alcoholics are already being financial punished by price hikes. I'd be happy for the price hikes to also fund treatment.
My point is that the only thing that's going to help alcoholics is treatment.
The founder of AA put it this way. "If an alcoholic travels to Greenland to get away from booze, he'll find the one Inuit with a bottle of Scotch."
No arguments there. My intent with the proposal was more centered around making alcohol consumption actually social. Balancing it against the obvious harms of alcohol is non-trivial.
Anecdotally, i drink more when I'm out with friends. I ususally drive to the bar or pub so that keeps me at 1 drink max, but if i didn't drive i find i drink about twice as much in a social setting than i do when alone. The high prices at bars actually help reduce over drinking in public for me.
Good point. No easy answers :(
Yes there are a lot of negatives to drinking but when you do drink socially do you:
You may drink twice as much and suffer more health issues but you actually gain the social benefits of alcohol, which are real. Without those social benefits alcohol just becomes an undeniably bad thing, ie. Drinking alone.
This has so much nuance. For instance, I use wine in cooking, but I do not drink AT ALL. In this case, I would get punished for… making my food tasty??
Tbh, I'm in the same boat. But government inflicted alcohol price rises are already happening in many places, so maybe it could be tweaked to help.
From a first read, this doesn't actually sound that bad. However, Ireland (and the US, prior to prohibition) had a huge alcohol problem in pubs as far as I am aware. This may not work as intended, but I can see how it would make it harder to hide one's alcoholism.
If allowing problem drinking could cause the alcohol service licence to be revoked (therefore no more cheap booze), perhaps pubs would be incentivised to prevent problem drinking. Requires a working regulatory environment though.
I don't believe bar alcohol would become cheaper (at least in my country). Bars are often times leased, and a lot of times the landlords are companies like Heineken. They charge some very high rent, and even have their own version of dynamic pricing where you can lease a not so popular bar, make it profitable again and then see the rent doubled because now it's A-list property. I've also never seen a price in retail go down due to lower costs in general, the difference gets pocketed by the company.
Bars could be required to have cheap booze in order to keep their licences. But heinekin owning the establishment is a bit of a conflict of interest there.
That would substantially increase DUIs assuming this isn't Europe we are talking about.
Nice try, gastronomy lobby.
My anecdotal experience agrees. I can easily self moderate my drinking in public, but at home all bets are off.
Unfortunately, FireRetardant is the opposite :( But I guess there was never gonna be a one-size-fits all answer here.