A couple years ago the French Health Minister began a campaign to warn people about the over consumption of alcohol. It was worded something like, "Drinking a little bit too much every day can put your life in danger." Fine, that's a middle-of-the-road statement. I'm sure there were endless government meetings on how to word this and not sound like they are against France's wine culture or their wine industry.
There's a French "health" lobby that wants to change the labeling on wine bottles from talking about moderation to say any alcohol consumption is dangerous. Okay, that's getting close to stepping on some French toes. They want to increase taxes on alcohol. Governments are always in favor of more revenue.
More drastically, they wish to control what people can say about alcohol on the Internet in France. They would like it to be illegal to promote alcohol. So I suppose a travel site mentioning, "Come taste in Burgundy" would be illegal? Oh-oh. Even Tweeting, "Drank a bottle of wine and partied all night" would be illegal. A big oh-oh.
How do the backers propose to enforce this Internet ban? According to the Wine Spectator one idiot, Patrick Elineau, pointed out the success of China's ban on Internet free speech.
This is not going to be popular.
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