Minimum alcohol pricing? Pah! It's a mere speck in comparison with what's to come.
WHO launches worldwide war on booze
I once suggested to some beardy tossbag from CAMRA that he should throw his weight behind objecting to tobacco prohibition because his vice was next. He piffled that drinkers were too numerous to be subject to the same denormalisation.
May God rot his middle class pompous paunch if he doesn't now realise that he was disastrously wrong.
Marvel in the new righteous front, backed up with the full force of the World Health Organisation.
HUMANITY's relationship with alcohol has never been easy. Now it is about to undergo as great a change as our attitude to tobacco, which has seen smoking plummet from the height of cool to the lowest of unpleasant habits.
That at least is the hope of the World Health Organization, which, between now and January, will be honing its draft of the first global strategy on reducing health damage from alcohol abuse, the fifth leading cause of premature death and disability worldwide.
Unveiled last week in Geneva, Switzerland, the document is the culmination of talks between representatives from the WHO's 193 member states. "It is a landmark document," says Peter Anderson, a health consultant and adviser on alcohol to the WHO and the European Union.
Hmmm. Such wild triumphalism rings a bell.
The similarities don't end there, either.
Sally Casswell of Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand, who helped produce the WHO document says a focus on passive drinking is key to winning public acceptance for more stringent alcohol legislation. "It challenges the neoliberal ideology which promotes the drinker's freedom to choose his or her own behaviour," she says.
And the lines are drawn against the nay-sayers too.
Others are sceptical of the [drinks] industry's contribution to the debate. Robin Room of the University of Melbourne, Australia, who studies the legislation on recreational drugs, fears that some parts of the WHO document may already have been watered down to appease the industry, especially those seeking to restrict marketing.
How very dare they defend their evil drug!
I'll say it again. You simply cannot pick and choose which freedoms you like and which you don't. You either stand up to all of the dictatorial bullying, or you will inevitably become a target.
The drinks industry had better get those screens ready, the anti-alcohol steamroller is on its way.
Now, cast your mind back ... when was the last time you voted for the WHO, exactly?
