In May 2024, the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance (USAPA) hosted their annual conference, Alcohol Policy 20, in Arlington, Virginia, gathering hundreds of state and local organizers, researchers, community activists, and public officials working on alcohol policy. One workshop was titled: “What’s Our Movement’s Name?” In a studio room of the Renaissance, attendees hashed out ideas. Tiffany Hall, the chair of USAPA, co-facilitated the session, writing the suggestions on the whiteboard: Big Alcohol Accountability; Communities Above the Influence; Rethink the Drink; and Bar None. They didn’t land on a consensus. “It just brought up a lot of conversation,” she says.
For those in the alcohol industry, however, one name has stuck—neo-prohibitionists, conjuring a second coming of the original temperance movement. Groups working to put limitations on access to alcohol have existed for almost as long as this country. The failed national experiment that was Prohibition largely removed public sympathy for this cause—that is, until recently. Organizations like USAPA, Alcohol Justice, and Movendi International have grown in size and influence and gained greater access to government policymakers—and their work is often at loggerheads with the alcohol industry.
But there is one fact that both the alcohol control advocates (as this article will refer to them) and the alcohol industry agree upon: it is a movement, and it’s gaining momentum.
“It’s clearly not a prohibitionist movement in the traditional sense; there’s no call to prohibit the consumption or sale of alcohol,” says Tom Wark, a wine public relations professional and the executive director of the National Association of Wine Retailers (NAWR). “I call it the anti-alcohol movement.”
In January 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement that “no level of alcohol consumption is safe” for human health, which came after input from organizations including Movendi and the Global Alcohol Policy Alliance, of which USAPA is a member. This catapulted the conversation into the public arena, and focused the conflict on whether any amount of alcohol consumption is risk-free. This debate will reach its apex in early 2025 with the release of the updated “Guidance on Alcoholic Beverages” in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, currently under review, which sources within the industry indicate might echo the WHO pronouncement. Even the procedural revision of these guidelines has been mired in controversy and accusations of bias.
“I’m worried about the impact it’ll have on the alcohol industry in general, particularly the wine industry,” says Wark. “And I’m worried about the false messaging that will be delivered to consumers overall.”
As the conflict escalates, SevenFifty Daily spoke to alcohol control advocates and beverage trade professionals to find out where this movement came from, what the endgame is, and whether there’s a future in which its goals can be compatible with an economically robust alcohol industry.
Where did this movement come from?
While most alcohol control advocates don’t identify as prohibitionists, Movendi International is, in its own words, “the largest independent global social movement for development through alcohol prevention.” As Dave Parker, the CEO and owner of Benchmark Wine Group, points out, “alcohol prevention is an absolute statement.”
Founded in 1851 as the Independent Order of Good Templars—which was influential in implementing Prohibition, something the organization disputes as a failure—it rebranded in 2020 as Movendi International to reflect a more modern and broader social mission. That mission is growing in popularity: in the four years between 2018 and 2022, according to its progress report, 22 new organizations joined as members. In that time they also published over 1,000 stories, science digests, and blog posts to “expose the predatory practices of Big Alcohol.” (Movendi did not respond to multiple requests for an interview). It now has 166 member organizations working within 62 countries.
Their influence has grown, too. Movendi appears as a source for the first time in the WHO’s 2024 “Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health and Treatment of Substance Use Disorders,” but on its website it states that it has contributed “actively to WHO’s work” and “has been a partner for more than three decades.” The list of organizations Movendi partners and collaborates with is extensive, including multiple UN platforms and programs, signaling its reach across the globe, from the West African Alcohol Policy Alliance to the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS) in London, which, incidentally, also has roots in the original temperance movement. California-based partner Alcohol Justice, which describes itself as “the industry watchdog,” has also grown; between 2015 and 2023, contributions to the organization increased by 52 percent to over $2 million.
The nonprofit, nonpartisan USAPA—another close ally of Movendi—was founded in 2014 as a coalition of state and local organizations working on alcohol policy, independent of commercial interests. It translates research into public health practice, assisting policymakers to know what changes will have the most impact. Hall is also the CEO of nonprofit Recover Alaska, which works to implement some of those policies in the state, and she, like many similar nonprofits, relies on the kind of data USAPA provides. While these organizations are often tiny—USAPA operates with a staff of six volunteers and filed $324,000 in revenue in 2022, while Movendi employs just seven people and has an annual budget of €300,000 ($314,259) according to its EU registration—fostering coalition building between state, national, and global groups and coordinating across fields of prevention, recovery, and policy advocacy has proven incredibly effective.
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