Well, all the discussion around booze and health just PR with plenty of public funding all around supporting the comms teams. I don’t expect them to be truth tellers. But I would also suggest from my experience in construction that folk interact with asbestos far more than they think. All those brutalist buildings? Those basement pipes with wrapping? But it’s good to discuss things. I had no idea of the relative numbers. So many ways to kick the bucket!

175 million people drank alcohol last year in the U.S. Something *less* than that figure interacted with asbestos. (Denominators matter.) People don’t consume asbestos, and they certainly can’t consume it moderately. There are a ton of reasons why the comparison is not apt.

I don’t expect this to convince you, and it’s okay for us to disagree. We can model how adult humans can have different opinions and still like each other! But I wanted to show my work about why I find the campaign disingenuous.

I always hit “post” first! Why do they never read “are you sure?”

You know, I entirely saw the greater point you were making but then I unexpectedly saw this comparison of stats. First: “from 1999 to 2017 an estimated 236,981 to 277,654 Americans died from asbestos exposure.” Second: “A total of 605,948 alcohol-induced deaths were recorded from 1999 through 2020”! So over twice as many death are attributed to booze. Is the rhetoric actually that inflammatory?

(I don’t know why I always read a comment *after* I post it!)

The OHA is a $20+ billion dollar agency that has been incredibly helpful for healthcare in Oregon. (There’s a whole thing about how blue states and red states respond to the shrinking federal safety net, and this is one example.) Rethink the Drink is a marketing project, and a tiny one, within the OHA. Its sole purpose it to get people to—well, it’s right there in the title. Would I define Rethink the Deink? Based on its ignominious 4-year run, absolutely. It doesn’t seem to be doing anything honestly educational, but it is demonizing important industries in the state.

Democracy is the negotiation of priorities, and I understand that there is a small but significant group who does want to restrain alcohol the way cigarettes have been. (I doubt many see a chance for a return to real prohibition.) That’s a legitimate perspective. Alcohol is dangerous. So are Doritos, cars, and hiking. How we sort that out is a political matter. In some societies, alcohol is basically banned.

But if you want my opinion, yes, I would immediately defund Rethink the Drink. I believe it’s a poor solution to a real problem.

But you wrote “ As long as the OHA continues to fund Rethink the Drink, we’re going to continue to have these flare-ups. What I would ask political leaders in Salem is this: why are you funding a program that attacks important industries you depend on…” which to me reads that you would have the OHA defunded for not taking into account non-health related business interests in your state. Given booze trade relies so heavily on rhetoric and spin to get its message across it seems entirely reasonable to extend the same grace to health agencies.

Well that is great. You’re setting a good standard for tech talk.

The test of my enthusiasm will be if I write up the Carnivale Brettanomyces which I’m heading to next week.

As you may have picked up, I retired at the end of March so I am behind you in terms of experimenting with what I can do with myself. I have thought about picking up the instruments that have been gathering dust for a couple of decades.