Health killjoys are now using alcohol guidelines to promote gender equality

To adapt Pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous dictum on the failure of the Germans to tackle Hitler, ‘First they came for the smokers and I did not speak out because I was not a smoker…’ How right the smoking lobby was when it warned that once the health Nazis had banned smoking in enclosed public spaces they would target the rest of us. Red meat, cured meat, sugar – all are the subject of increasingly belligerent health campaigns.

Today the Chief Medical Officer has upped the ante on alcohol. No amount of alcohol intake is safe, she says. We risk cancer with every sip we take. The recommended maximum for men has been reduced from 28 to 14 units a week and for women from 21 to 14 units. That the maximum recommended intake is now the same for men and women itself speaks of ideology. Never mind that repeated studies have shown that men have greater tolerance of alcohol than women, the doctrine of gender equality must trump the evidence.