Ah, I knew it had been too quiet lately. Most of Alcohol Justice‘s press recently has been beating the same old dead horses. But today they tweeted out the following:

“every day is worth celebrating responsibly.” Diageo reveals its true goal…everyone should ‪#drink‬ ‪#alcohol‬ every day. http://bit.ly/Ky7MM

Quite a “gotcha,” right? Hardly, more like an abject lesson in how to twist words to your own agenda. Silly, when you really think about, but they’ve never been above shameless grandstanding and using whatever means necessary to press their anti-alcohol agenda.

First of all, the link takes you to an op-ed piece entitled Imports from China are good for Canada that has nothing whatsoever to do with Diageo or alcohol on any level. An honest mistake, most likely, but it still makes them seem — let’s put it charitably — less than professional. We all mistakes — I make them all the time — but I don’t have a staff of zealots at my disposal to keep me from making the obvious ones.

The quote they take issue with appears to be from a press release from April (way to be timely!) about a product I’m not particularly thrilled about either: Smirnoff Ice Black. In the press release, SMIRNOFF© Announces Newest Addition, SMIRNOFF ICE© Black, in Time for Spring, they end with the following, seemingly innocuous, statement. “As always, SMIRNOFF ICE reminds all legal drinking age adult consumers that every day is worth celebrating responsibly.”

To Alcohol Justice, that’s proof positive of Diageo’s evil intent, that Diageo’s “true goal” is to persuade every man, woman (and probably children) to drink alcohol every single day. Oh, the horror! My first thought, of course, is so what? A drink a day for an adult is not exactly the horror they believe it to be, and despite their unreasonable opinion to the contrary, would be quite healthy for a majority of persons, and would provide health benefits to boot. Meta-studies have shown that a person engaging in responsible drinking (even defined as modestly as two drinks for a man and one for a women per day) will most likely live longer than a person who does not drink at all.

But that aside, saying “that every day is worth celebrating responsibly” is NOT the same as saying everyone MUST drink every day. It’s saying that it’s “worth celebrating,” which is very different. Every day is worth celebrating something, but that doesn’t mean you will or should do so. You probably won’t, if you’re a typical person with a job, a family and other obligations. We’d all love to have the kind of life that would allow us to have a holiday-like celebration, complete with cake and beer, every single day, but seeing as that’s pretty unlikely for most of us, it’s pretty clear that’s not what Diageo is suggesting. Seriously, you’d have to be pretty jaded and filled with hatred to think that’s what they meant.