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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