How my heart bleeds for them. They've been at the centre of our nation's history since Europeans landed on these shores but what do we do? We shun them and in so doing threaten the very core of our culture.

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I'm talking, of course, about the alcohol companies. Someone, anyone, spare a thought for them.

From the glory days of the Rum Corps, when booze was actual currency, to now, we're becoming a nation of teetotallers. Craft brewers are going out of business almost weekly - some 80 in the past three years - and even the bigger concerns are struggling. Northern Tassie won't be the same now that Boag's has shut down production and will be importing the stuff from the mainland.

Across the big cities, those grungy establishments hawking expensive brews to pasty kidults in flannelette shirts are out of favour with the young people they once attracted. Sitting around on milk crates drinking dishwater with top notes of pineapple has lost its appeal.

It's so bad that at the Australian Hotels Association annual awards night in Sydney last week red baseball caps emblazoned with the words Make Drinking Great Again were handed out to attendees.

Oh, the glittering past! How we miss the six o'clock swill, the sly grog merchants of the inner-city back lanes, the drunken brawls, the ruined families. Glory days indeed.

Brain-fogging beer isn't the only victim of Australia's pivot away from alcohol. Wine sales are also tanking, with grape growers describing the plunge as the worst crisis they've seen in generations. In South Australia, the Malinauskas government has poured $109 million into a support package for its wine industry.

Of course, Australia isn't the only country falling victim to this sinister plot to make drinking - and by extension being drunk - totally uncool.

Four years ago, the Japanese government launched a campaign to encourage its young people back onto the sake. Taxes from the national drink had once accounted for 5 per cent of government revenue. By 2022, that had slumped to just 1.7 per cent. It even held a nationwide competition calling for ideas to ... make drinking great again.

Unable to make itself great again, the US is also turning away from drinking, with a Gallup poll last year finding only 54 per cent of adult Americans were drinking, a record low.

So who's killing off these upstanding alcohol businesses that only enriched society? The finger is being pointed squarely at that troublesome Gen Z, whose obsession with wellness has overpowered the once youthful desire to get blind drunk with mates. That and, of course, the cost of living. When a schooner of unremarkable beer sets you back anything from $8 to $12 - and a craftie even more - a glass of water becomes a lot more tempting.

Bad news for........

© Canberra Times