How typical of the killjoy Gordon Brown and his misguided, ill-advised Department of Health to target middle-class wine drinkers as the root cause of the nation’s woes. Government smoke screens attempting to deflect attention away from real threats, citing demon drink as the country’s downfall, are nothing new.

However, Brown and Dawn Primarolo, the Public Health Minister, have reached new levels of scaremongering, stupidity and absurdity on this one.

Once again the sensible majority of wine drinkers in Britain are being penalised by an unfortunate minority whose unhealthy lives are at risk from many factors besides alcohol.

Since the so-called safe weekly alcohol allowance was devised by the Royal Colleges two decades ago the goal posts have been moved on several occasions. The safe level for women has moved from 21 to 14 and back again to 21 weekly units and the male figure has moved from 28 to 21 and back to 28. Consequently, wine traders in Britain have been forced to label bottles of wine with the precise unit-per-glass figure. The truth is that almost all wine drinkers, if they are being honest with themselves, know precisely how much, or how little, they can drink without damaging their health.

Indeed, the many well-documented health benefits and life enhancing attributes of wine received many more column inches over the past five years than antialcohol negativity.

All of us have probably had wobbly student wine experiences but most drinkers swiftly settle down into a routine, drinking wine mostly with food and knowing how much to drink with the likes of a hearty three-course meal with lots of carbohydrates to sop up the alcohol and what glass of wine to drink with an apple and a slice of cheese at lunch.

For the Prime Minister and the Department of Health to descend to nanny and police state tactics, ostensibly to protect us from ourselves, but to further their own political agenda, is as risible as it is dangerous.

It is high time that the Department of Health grew up.

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