Not long ago, the corporate leaders of the United States’ beverage-alcohol industry had four very scary horsemen of the alco-pocalypse on which to blame their companies’ ongoing sales woes.

There were zealots of temperance working under the guise of legitimate public-health institutions like the World Health Organization to achieve “neo-prohibitionism.” There were inscrutable zoomers turning their backs on millennia of drinking tradition in favor of trendy “sober-curiosity.” The Youths’ vexing rejection of alcohol, boardroom wisdom held, had been abetted by the ongoing legalization, mainstreaming, and diversification of cannabinoids like weed proper and its hemp-based frenemy, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Finally, there were GLP-1 medications (Ozempic, Wegovy…), new super-drugs that seemed to be curbing patients’ thirst at the psycho-chemical level.

The trade’s top brass got an enormous amount of mileage out of these industrial-strength bogeymen, trotting them out in earnings calls and friendly press appearances as the source of the malaise that has gripped the beverage-alcohol industry since pandemic pantry-stocking subsided. It’s a good gambit, and it has bought Big Booze crucial time from shareholders wondering what happened to those sweet, sweet returns. But lately, a problem has emerged. Credulous Wall Street analysts and mainstream-media journalists are finally starting to realize the four horsemen of the alco-pocalypse are, well, kinda horseshit. Which means the c-suiters of the beleaguered beverage-alcohol business are running out of excuses.