A British Professor Claims Alcohol Is Becoming A Thing Of The Past
By Thomas Pellechir, Contributor
December 18, 2017
Professor David Nutt was once the chairman of the United Kingdom’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. But he was fired from the post in 2009 after suggesting horse riding was more dangerous than MDMA ,3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine—ecstacy.
The next time the professor was heard from was in a September, 2016 drinksbusiness.com article about Alcosynth, a synthetic alcohol that mimics the effects of alcohol without any health downsides . With almost 100 patented chemical compounds under his belt to produce Alcosynth, the professor hopes to raise seven million British pounds to bring to market his synthetic alcohol; for that, he has created a trademark synthetic alcohol search party and company: Alcarelle™.
According to International Business Times (IBT), eight scientists are on the job to find and market synthetic alcohol that keeps the buzz but loses the hangover and other side effects, like failing health. The good Professor Nutt told IBT that he expects his product to do to alcohol what he expects e-cigarettes to do to tobacco-based cigarettes, which wipes the original off the map. In 10 or 20 years, according to Nutt, Western societies will be awash in Alcosynth and alcohol will be largely a thing of the past, something only a few diehards will swallow on occasion.
Among the hundreds of synthetic compounds, Alcarelle has identified to produce alcosynth, two made from a benzodiazepine derivative (similar to Valium) are right now being tested for public consumption.
Alcarelle has targeted a group that already eschews alcohol in greater numbers than previous generations: 18-25 year-olds in the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United States and Canada. According to the company’s managing director, David Orren, products derived from Alcosynth might be on track to change Western culture. Still, the company has one eye on the lookout for marketing its products in China.
Orren told IBT that alcohol is responsible for more deaths than malaria, meningitis, tuberculosis and dengue fever combined. Along with fewer deaths, his company envisions less unpleasantness, less violence and certainly less vomiting.
Nutt and Orren may be onto something, at least in the United Kingdom.
In November, BMI Research reported on a growing trend in the U.K. for low alcohol products. The article claims the Office of National Statistics shows more than twenty-five percent of young Britons between ages 16-24 are teetotalers. According to BMI, between 2017 and 2021 wine consumption in the U.K. will drop an annual 0.2 percent. If that were to happen, it would be a sizable turnaround from wine’s 1.6 percent average annual growth between 2012-2016.
None other than the giant alcohol company, Diageo seems to agree. In 2015 the company launched Seedlip, billed oxymoronically as the first non-alcohol spirits. In 2016, a Diageo backed spirits investment fund, Distil Ventures put some money into Seedlip.
The massive U.K. grocer, Tesco recently launched low-alcohol sparkling wines, Sauvignon Blanc, Garnacha-Rosé and Cabernet-Tempranillo blend. Each comes in at less than 0.5 percent alcohol by volume. The grocer partnered with Felix Solis SL a family-operated wine company in Spain. For Tesco’s low-alcohol wines, Solis applied spinning cone technology that supposedly extracts alcohol gently without affecting aroma and taste.
The beer industry has seen the trend, which is why AB InBev, Carlsberg, and Heineken each have introduced non-alcoholic beer. Based on Mike Pomeranz’s report on Heineken’s entry, low-alcohol beer has a ways to go before the promise of removing alcohol gently without affecting aroma or taste is factually realized. The same is likely to be true for either low-alcohol or no-alcohol wine.