“Good substitutes behind declining alcohol consumption, says business leader.” 

DOM McGregor, co-founder of media agency The Social Chain, has told how declining alcohol consumption seen in recent statistics is due to the widespread availability of alcohol-free alternatives.

Mr McGregor told GB News:

“Brands like Heineken have introduced very good substitutes. So, if you went to a pub five years ago and asked for an alcoholic drink, I don’t think there’d be many options apart from a Coke and obviously we’ve seen the rise of sugar in things like Coke as well…

“Now with a really good drink like Heineken Zero and other options, people now have a choice rather than just getting something they didn’t want.”

Asked why people would want to drink “fake beer”, he said: “I think there’s a little bit of a psychological aspect of having the taste of beer but not being alcoholic.

“I think especially for a lot of men, the kind of culture around pubs, pubs are a space where a lot of men go to socialise so to feel included in their situations and having something like an alcoholic beer is better than having maybe a water.

“There’s actually an easy first step for people to make the change and not feel isolated from a social perspective.”

He added: “The number one reason people fail to stop drinking is social pressures, you know, from their friendship groups, people asking them why they’re not drinking.

“You have a lot of issues with females who want to drink because they don’t want to get questioned whether they’re pregnant or anything.

“So people find a huge amount of social pressure forcing them to drink, so having more people around you who are not drinking, more options…people find it much easier to not choose alcohol and a lot of times people are peer pressured into drinking when they might not want to.

“So having those options is a much better way of people being able to say no, I’m not gonna drink tonight.”

Mr McGregor continued: “Alcohol is the only drug you don’t have to justify not taking when it comes to alcohol, there’s still this kind of social stigma around it about not drinking and some of the states people get into from alcohol is a lot worse than drugs and the damage it can cause people from a health perspective and from a social perspective is massive.

“It’s one of the biggest burdens on the NHS…people need to realise is, there is another world out there and it doesn’t have to centre on alcohol.”