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people than in many others, it is still the number one cause of death.

Within the past year, several other revelations have highlighted this

little-publicized, other side of French drinking:

According to the first French economic study of its kind, France is more like

the U.S. than Americans might realize in that alcohol also ranks first - above

tobacco - in its cost to society. Tobacco takes more of a toll than alcohol in

the rest of Europe, Canada and Australia.

The high premature death rate of French men is largely due to alcohol abuse. It

is nearly double the premature death rate of French women, and the magnitude of

the difference is the highest in Europe, according to the French government's

most recent report on health.

French youth, who can legally drink at age 16, prefer beer and distilled spirits

to wine and have increased their consumption five-fold since 1996 in part

because 12- to 14-year-olds are drinking and binge drinking. This has led to a

new government "War Against Drugs" that includes alcohol.

[...]

The French Paradox. Even in English the expression sounded romantic to 33.7 million

Americans who first heard it in a report by Morley Safer on "60 Minutes" in November

1991. Although the French eat fatty foods and smoke more than Americans, said Safer,

"if you're a middle-aged American man, your chances of dying of a heart attack are

three times greater than a Frenchman of the same age. Obviously, they're doing

something right - something Americans are not doing... Now it's all but confirmed:

Alcohol - in particular red wine - reduces the risk of heart disease."

Within four weeks, U.S. sales of red wine rocketed by 44 percent. American Airlines

reported being unable to stock enough red wine to meet demand. By February 1992, a

Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of Americans were aware of research linking

moderate drinking to lower rates of heart disease. According to the poll, consumers

had returned to drinking levels not seen since the mid-'80s. Although beer remained

the preferred drink of Americans, wine preference increased from 22 to 27 percent.

Five months after the 1992 poll, "60 Minutes" re-broadcast the "French Paradox"

segment. Sales of red wine shot up 49 percent over the previous year. Safer was

honored in France with a special "communication" prize from LVMH Moet Hennessy-Louis

Vuitton.

During the next few years, the Wine Institute lobbied officials of the U.S.

Department of Health to reflect studies confirming the "60 Minutes" side of French

drinking in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which the industry subsequently used to

market wine as a health elixir. Food and Wines from France, which promotes Gallic

products overseas, placed full-page newspaper ads announcing that French consumption

of fatty food was counteracted by drinking French red wine.

"[Health] announcements are increasing consumption more than anything else," said

Stephanie Grubbs, marketing manager for Robert Mondavi Coastal, in Impact magazine in

1997. That same year, three out of four readers in the January Consumer Reports on

Health survey believed that moderate red wine consumption is more beneficial than

drinking beer or liquor.

Recently, the San Francisco-based Wine Institute helped some California wineries get

permission from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to add a label

referring consumers to the federal dietary guidelines to learn the "health effects"

of alcohol. But anyone who actually sent for the document would discover that the

government's advice on alcohol is mostly cautionary.

Inflamed by the belief that the wine industry was using the label to make it appear

that the government was suggesting Americans drink for their health, Senator Strom

Thurmond (R-SC), whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, recently won a battle

for the BATF to hold hearings on whether the "health effects" label can legally be

affixed to every wine bottle. They're scheduled to take place in a number of U.S.

cities in late spring.

Today the Wine Institute touts its product on its website with studies and press

releases. One quotes David Pittman, Ph.D., researcher at Washington University in

St. Louis: "In societies such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, where wine and

overall alcohol consumption is higher than in the United States, they just don't have

as many alcohol-related problems such as drunk driving and underage drinking."

That would be news to France.

The world view that the French are able to control their drinking habits is untrue,

according to Pierre Kopp, professor of economics at the Sorbonne. Kopp recently

released the first French study estimating the cost of legal (alcohol and tobacco)

and illegal drugs. Kopp estimates that alcohol costs France $18.5 billion (U.S.)

each year. Drinking is responsible for nearly 53 percent of overall social costs of

alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs, he reports. (Annual cost to the state is $14.3

billion for tobacco and $2 billion for illegal drugs.)