Excessive intake of wine, beer and champagne may define Christmas and New Year celebrations across France, but a report by the country's leading addiction monitoring agency shows that alcohol consumption is declining for the rest of the year.
The French Observatory for Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT), which tracks substance use and addiction trends nationwide, revealed that 600 million litres of pure alcohol were sold in 2023 – a 3.8 percent drop compared with the previous year.
On average, each person over the age of 15 consumed 10.35 litres of pure alcohol during the year, down from 10.76 litres in 2022.
Despite the decline in alcohol consumption, the number of alcohol-related hospitalisations has increased.
In 2023, 307,676 people spent a total of 595,326 days in hospital, compared to nearly 301,000 people and 573,000 days in 2021, the report said.
Wine most popular
The survey says though there were fewer sales of wine, it still accounts for 52 percent of alcoholic beverages sold in France.
The wine industry also has a significant economic footprint, with a turnover of 24.8 billion euros and more than 50,000 employees.
By contrast, the brewing industry employs 5,400 people with a turnover of 1.6 billion euros, while the champagne and spirits sectors provide 18,000 jobs and contribute a combined turnover of 20 billion euros.
That combined muscle has come under fire from public health campaigners who say the alcohol industry is a powerful lobby that exerts too much influence over the government.
They want ministers to be more vocal about abstinence campaigns such as Dry January, where people challenge themselves to forgo alcohol for a month after the traditional excesses of Christmas and New Year's parties.
“There is a gap between public awareness that alcohol is a drug and the political class,” Bernard Basset, president of the NGO Addictions France, told told FranceInfo.
“The alcohol lobby encourages us to consume alcohol by presenting it as a refined pleasure. But most people drink fairly ordinary wines. Not everyone can drink top wines like Château Petrus every day.”
Changing drinking habits
The report also highlights a shift in drinking patterns. The traditional “Mediterranean” style of moderate daily wine consumption with meals is being replaced by a “Nordic” pattern, where young people binge drink at parties but avoid alcohol on other days.
One positive finding in the report is a reduction in alcohol-related road deaths.
Of the 3,167 road fatalities recorded in 2023, 702 were linked to drink-driving.
This marks a decrease from 2022, when 759 of the 3,267 road deaths were attributed to alcohol consumption.
