First of 8 weekly articles documenting bias in “The Cambridge Student”: Lent 2009 Issue 1.

This week it’s an anti-drinking article, “Pints for pennies: a public risk?”

Wetherspoon’s have started selling pints for 99p. The one-sided article was anti-alcohol in tone, quoting anti-alcohol campaigners but no pro-alcohol campaigners in response. TCS quote Wetherspoon’s themselves, who say that it has not caused any problems. But the article tries to create controversy out of nothing. Councillor Ian Nimmo-Smith is quoted complaining that it may encourage people to drink more. Andrea Walko, CUSU’s “Welfare Officer”, is quoted reciting the government alcohol guidelines. This is despite the fact that the government guidelines “were plucked out of the air”. They have “no firm scientific basis whatsoever”:

Subsequent studies found evidence which suggested that the safety limits should be raised, but they were ignored by a succession of health ministers.

One found that men drinking between 21 and 30 units of alcohol a week had the lowest mortality rate in Britain. Another concluded that a man would have to drink 63 units a week, or a bottle of wine a day, to face the same risk of death as a teetotaller.

The disclosure that the 1987 recommendation was prompted by “a feeling that you had to say something” came from Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced it.

He told The Times that the committee’s epidemiologist had confessed that “it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t” because “we don’t really have any data whatsoever”.

Mr Smith, a former Editor of the British Medical Journal, said that members of the working party were so concerned by growing evidence of the chronic damage caused by heavy, long-term drinking that they felt obliged to produce guidelines. “Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee,” he said.

Andrea Walko has also said giving out free drinks is “irresponsible”: “I don’t think alcohol should ever be given out for free. This definitely encourages alcohol use.”

“Alcohol Concern” is quoted: “Alcohol causes harm to the nation’s health and economy, and there appears to be a strong link between cheap alcohol and the high levels of binge drinking in the UK.”

However, “Alcohol Concern” is a notorious “fake charity”.

“Created by the British government in 1985, Alcohol Concern wages an incremental campaign against drinkers and the drinks industry.

Alcohol Concern supports banning happy hour, raising the price of alcohol, lowering the drink drive limit, banning glass bottles in pubs, warning labels on cans and bottles and banning TV advertising before 9pm. It described the ban on happy hour promotions as ‘a step in the right direction’ and the introduction of cigarette-style warning labels on bottles as ‘a very good first step’.

According to its 2007/08 accounts, Alcohol Concern received £515,000 from the Department of Health. It received just £4,991 in public donations.”

This “controversy” was concocted out of nothing.