The draft "Non-alcoholic month" in January, which associations and addictologists denounce the abandonment under the pressure of the wine lobby, had "not been validated by the Ministry of Health," said Thursday the Minister of Health. Health Agnès Buzyn.

January's "No Alcohol Month" will not take place. "The campaign is being worked on.This measure has not yet been validated by the Ministry of Health, it was not proposed to me," said Agnès Buzyn Thursday on France Info. The Public Health Agency France has never officially announced the launch of this operation to raise awareness of the risks of alcohol. But an internal source told AFP on Wednesday that the project was indeed prepared, and should have been officially unveiled very soon, for a launch in January.

A "state evasion"

"There have been arbitrations on a corner of the table that question, while budgets were skewed and people at work," said Wednesday to AFP Nathalie Latour, General Delegate of the Federation addiction, which rose against a "state evasion". "We have an interdepartmental committee dedicated to health prevention in February and it is at this time that the prevention programs are validated by the government," continued Agnès Buzyn, thus implicitly confirming that the month without alcohol does not would not take place in January. "The teams of Public Health France have worked on campaigns that are not yet completed and on which I must take a stand but it is not necessarily the format that will be retained," she continued.

The opposition of the alcohol lobby

The format in question is modeled on a challenge launched in 2013 in England by the association Alcohol Change. More and more popular across the Channel, the "Dry January" is to stop, or at least decrease, its consumption of alcohol during the first month of the year. However, the prospect of its adaptation in France under the aegis of the public authorities had for several weeks been the opposition of the alcohol lobby.

On 14 November, during his visit to Champagne, President Emmanuel Macron met representatives from the industry. "You can let it be known that there will be no dry January," he told us, "then assured the co-chairman of the Champagne Committee, Maxime Toubart, to the specialized website Vitisphère. The services of the Elysee have neither confirmed nor denied the remarks made to the President of the Republic.

In France, a Month without tobacco has been held every year in November since 2016, under the auspices of the Ministry.