The Commercial Determinants of Nonalcoholic Beer: Redemption,Revenue,or Men’s Harm Reduction?

Abstract

Public awareness about the connections between men’s alcohol use and poor health outcomes, including increased male suicide risk, has led to reduced consumption and increased use of nonalcoholic beverages—most prominently nonalcoholic beer (NAB). Marketed as a healthy substitution option (i.e., periodically switching to an NAB rather than abstaining from alcoholic beer), the rapidly growing NAB sector might be somewhat redemptive, wherein the alcoholic beer industry (as the predominant producers of NAB) is selling harm reduction to men, albeit for profit. The commercial determinants of NAB are, however, complex and have significant implications for legislation and policy. For example, in Canada, NAB is exempt from alcoholic beer excise duty but considered beer for the goods and services and harmonized sales taxes. Coupled with industry production costs and profit margins, these taxes contribute to NAB and alcoholic beer retail price parity. From a public health perspective, there are also concerns about increasing alcoholic beer brand recognition and sales revenue by extending NAB visibility in more places (e.g., supermarkets), contexts (e.g., taking medication), and activities (e.g., driving). The current article highlights (1) the connections between men’s alcohol use and health risks, ahead of discussing, (2) the rise of NAB, and mapping (3) NAB legislation and policy implications. We conclude with a discussion about the redemption, revenue, and men’s harm reduction potentials, pragmatically arguing the need to both regulate and incentivize NAB. Proposed are promising directions for future research with the goal of reducing men’s alcohol use and associated harms.

Introduction

Within the commercial determinants of health, four industries, alcohol, tobacco, ultra-processed food, and fossil fuels, account for more than a third of global deaths (Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network, 2019). Working to reduce these harms through legislation and policy, there have been calls to recognize that consumer goods industries (and, by extension, broader commercial determinants) can make both positive and negative contributions to health (Gilmore et al., 2023). In the specific context of alcohol, there is increasing public awareness about its wide-ranging negative health effects (Zhao et al., 2023), with strong empirical linkages between men’s alcohol use and injuries, accidents, violence, liver failure, and suicide (Isaacs et al., 2022). The attention to alcohol’s widespread negative social and health effects has influenced many men’s drinking patterns, with the alcohol industry responding by diversifying its product range to make and actively market nonalcoholic beverages (Taylor, 2018). In the context of beer consumption, market research indicates that the falling sales of high calorie, high carbohydrate alcoholic beer are in large part due to young men (30–44 years old) turning away from traditional heavy beers (Taylor, 2018). At the same time, many men indicate that beer is their drink of choice (Finlay & Wenner, 2020), and the beer industry’s somewhat unprecedented move to sustain and build that popularity has included brewing and selling nonalcoholic beer (NAB) to men (Serafim, 2022). Introduced in the late 2010s and early 2020s, NAB has had steadily increasing sales ever since (Richter, 2024). While men’s NAB consumption may reflect their demand for healthy alternatives, a proposition disrupting claims about men’s disregard for self-health (see Courtenay, 2000), there are important legislation and policy considerations. These include NAB’s market visibility and positionality and its pricing and taxes. The current article foregrounds (1) the connections between men’s alcohol use and health risks, ahead of discussing; (2) the rise of NAB; and mapping (3) NAB legislation and policy implications. We conclude with a discussion about the redemption, revenue, and men’s harm reduction potential of NAB, pragmatically arguing the need to both regulate and incentivize NAB with the goal of reducing men’s alcohol use and associated harms including male suicide risk.

Men’s Alcohol Use and Health Risks

It is fair to say that the commercial determinants of health are tainted by some unscrupulous industries and amoral business practices that put profits before the well-being of people (Gilmore et al., 2023). Perennially featured in these critiques, the alcohol industry uniquely operates across two dominant but discordant discourses. In one framing, alcohol consumption is persuasively marketed and culturally normed as what men do (and overdo) for recreation, reward, and release (Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2020). Within these masculine milieus, alcohol use diversely features in the every day to mark milestones, amplify celebratory effects and demarcate the work week’s end, amid easing stress and all manner of social connection (Emslie et al., 2013). By contrast, there is a risk discourse supported by long-standing empirical evidence indicating that alcohol use significantly increases men’s likelihood of illness, injury, and suicide (Jones et al., 2017). Indeed, the negative physical and mental ill-health effects of men’s alcohol use impose significant public health costs for seemingly preventable morbidities and mortalities. The costs for hospitalizations caused entirely by alcohol in Canada (249 per 100,000) are comparable to acute cardiac admissions (243 per 100,000) and 13 times higher than that for opioids (Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, 2019). Worldwide, the systemic harms of alcohol use exceed the health cost of all other regulated and unregulated substances including tobacco (Babor et al., 2022).

These enormous disease burdens and health care costs of alcohol reflect its high consumption per capita in countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia, with overuse far more prevalent in men compared with women (World Health Organization [WHO], 2017). While roughly the same number of men (78%) and women (74%) report using alcohol (Statistics Canada, 2023), men, especially young White males 18 to 34 years old who earn >$75,000 (Division of Population Health, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2024), are more likely to drink alcohol in excess (Paradis et al., 2023) at least once a month (Varin et al., 2021). Men’s binge drinking and chronic alcohol overuse have manifested in their higher rates of alcohol use disorder (Pearson et al., 2013) and alcohol-related deaths compared with women (7.7% vs. 2.6% of global deaths; WHO, 2022). Contributing to this is alcohol-associated liver failure, for which Canadian population health data indicates that 73% of related deaths were among males (Flemming et al., 2021). Injuries involving alcohol are likewise a leading cause of premature disability and death worldwide, disproportionally involving men driving under the influence in motor vehicle accidents (Paradis et al., 2023). The harms of men’s drunk driving are also far-reaching, with many people experiencing debilitating injuries as a consequence. Undeniably, there is a great degree of harm, trauma, and deaths resulting from men’s alcohol use, especially in the context of heavy episodic drinking (Paradis et al., 2023). These aforementioned alcohol-related injuries and illnesses often recursively entwine, flowing to and from men’s mental health challenges and heightening male suicide risk (Bilsker et al., 2018).

Interlinking multiple risk factors with dire mental health outcomes for men and their partners, families, and friends (Rizk et al., 2021), the top 3 predictors of male suicidal behaviors are (1) alcohol and/or other drug use/dependence, (2) being separated, divorced or single, and (3) having a diagnosis of depression (Richardson et al., 2021). Interconnecting to increase men’s suicide risk, long-standing evidence indicates that men self-medicate with alcohol for distressed and disrupted intimate partner relationships as well as to blunt depressive symptoms (Oliffe et al., 2022). Alcohol, as a depressant, is also known to increase relationship dysfunction (Oliffe, Rossnagel, et al., 2019) and heighten depression and anxiety (Sher, 2014), amid potentiating all forms of men’s violent behaviors, most prominently intimate partner violence (IPV) and domestic violence (DV) (Kilian et al., 2024). The combination of these risk factors disproportionately impacts some male sub-groups including military (Khan et al., 2020), sexual minority (Ferlatte et al., 2015), and Indigenous men (Affleck et al., 2022) culminating in increased suicide risk in these equity-owed cohorts (Khan et al., 2020). These health inequities reflect the increased harms of alcohol for men who are living in marginalizing conditions. In terms of direct linkages, intoxicated men are more likely to attempt suicide (Hufford, 2001) and use lethal methods (Isaacs et al., 2022). Twenty-five to 30% of male suicide deaths are related to alcohol use (Ramstedt, 2005), and high blood alcohol levels are often found in men who have died by suicide (Sher, 2006).

Recognizing the harms and costs of alcohol use, there have been public health campaigns dedicated to reducing men’s drinking (Bernards et al., 2022). These efforts have, however, often inadvertently targeted men as needing to self-regulate their alcohol use and drink responsibly. For men who cannot control their drinking, interventions predominately compromise downstream corrective clinical services and/or community-based behavior change programs focused on treating addictions and associated maladaptive behaviors among men who are already experiencing harm related to alcohol use (Covington et al., 2022). Concurrently, alcohol brewers, marketers, and retailers, as well as governments, profit from alcohol sales amid consistently defaulting to men’s self-governance as the sensibility for individuals controlling their alcohol use. Men’s alcohol-related risk reliance can reflect alignments to traditional masculinities wherein they compete and socially connect through male drinking cultures (de Visser & Smith, 2007). The bonds forged between men can gamify, solidify, and norm the overuse of alcohol, beckoning gender-sensitive, transformative, and responsive programs dedicated to addressing this long-standing men’s health issue (Zamboanga et al., 2023). While men’s agency has featured both in alcohol use problematics and resiliencies for recovery and abstinence, there is increasing attention to the structural determinants of health with an emphasis on the role and responsibilities of legislation and policy in regulating the commercial alcohol industry (Canadian Institutes of Health Research [CIHR], 2024).

In summary, alcohol remains the third leading cause of premature death and disability worldwide (WHO, 2010), wherein young men—20 to 39 years old—are the most negatively impacted sub-group (WHO, 2022). The harms of men’s alcohol use implicate many industries that profit from its sale, while also questioning how structural determinants of health can work with commercial interests in neoliberal markets. Men’s agency and autonomy, and public health efforts for structurally and systemically acting on the empirical evidence that men’s alcohol use increases health risks, including male suicide, have perhaps prompted some men to reduce their alcohol use.

The Rise of NAB

While NAB, wine, and spirits were traditionally popular during designated sober holidays (i.e., Good Friday), these beverages have become mainstream, with the market value in the United States alone exceeding $500 million (NielsenIQ, 2023). Amid a growing array of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, beer has remained the most successfully marketed drink to men, strategically integrating its product identity with masculine norms and cultures (Richter, 2024). In terms of transitioning alcoholic to nonalcoholic beverages, NAB leads the market, accounting for 86% of the overall non-alcohol beverage sales (NielsenIQ, 2023), with predictions that its worth will surpass $40 billion by 2032 (Global Market Insights, 2022). The key commercial determinants driving the rise of NAB are product quality and range, along with affirmational marketing that is both satiating and propelling the fast-growing demand among men and others (Richter, 2024).

In terms of product quality, the historically negative view of NAB’s taste was a major barrier to men’s consumption, and this perception (and experience) needed to be changed (Day et al., 2024). Accordingly, the beer industry invested heavily in refining brewing techniques to replicate the sensory characteristics, aesthetics, and taste appeal of alcoholic beer in NAB (Grover et al., 2022), to the extent that many consumers are unable to differentiate the taste of alcohol-free and alcohol-containing beers (Lachenmeier et al., 2014). With product quality and diverse NAB types and styles, the marketing of such products as men’s context-dependent choice, rather than having to give up alcoholic beer, was key. Promoted as a healthy substitution for men (i.e., periodically switching to an NAB rather than abstaining from alcoholic beer), most of the major alcoholic beer brands brew and sell their NABs with near identical taste and branding to their alcoholic beer.

Heineken 0.0, the leading NAB in the United States, grossed more than $77 million in 2023 (Statista, 2023), and their gendered marketing effectively trades on contemporary masculinities. For example, Heineken’s initial 0.0 campaign used the catch phrase, the moment you couldn’t have a beer. . .now you can, offering a trio of humorous ads featuring young male motorcyclists, boating enthusiasts, and an office worker having a NAB with lunch (Barcats, 2023). The NAB pitch to and resonance with male consumers was freedom; that is, men were depicted as being able to consume NAB anytime and anywhere while doing anything (Flemming et al., 2021). In line with this, the cheers with no alcohol . . . now you can commercial playfully contrast current-day NAB drinkers as socially included and connected. Heineken’s 30th anniversary for sponsoring the U.S. Open Tennis Championship featured ambassadors Taylor Fritz (the highest ranked U.S. male tennis player at the time) and his influencer girlfriend, Morgan Riddle, promoting the limited-edition tournament-specific L0ve.L0ve NAB (Berger, 2024). Embodying equity-based gender relations, the brand messaging spoke to the ideals and ease of young men fully connecting with their female partners through sharing NAB. Other campaigns included Budweiser Zero’s partnership with the Toronto Blue Jays to promote “smart” or “responsible” drinking and Anheuser-Busch’s public pledge that 20% of their global beer sales would be no or low-alcohol beer by 2025 (ABInBev, 2023). Across these marketing campaigns, NAB is positioned as affirming and reinforcing contemporary masculinities commitment to moderation, healthy lifestyles, social connection, and emotional intimacy through activities otherwise prohibited, undermined or stained when drinking alcoholic beer. NAB promises (and provides) quality beer taste while providing men the option to decide how much alcohol they consume (Nicholls, 2024). Purposefully pro-choice, NAB might signal some semblance of corporate responsibility wherein the alcoholic beer industry seemingly aligns with public health efforts for reducing men’s alcohol use. However, the sales of NAB can also be argued as industry responding to shifting consumer demand to sustain (and ideally extend) their profits.

This affirmational marketing is informed by market research indicating that the sales of high-calorie, high-carb alcoholic beer are falling as young men (30–44 years old) turn away from traditional heavy beers (Taylor, 2018). Concurrently, the demand for NAB is growing with stereotypes of men who consume NAB as less masculine (Day et al., 2024), giving way to increasing social acceptance for men managing their alcohol intake (Myles et al., 2020). Indeed, grassroots movements including Dry January and Sober October have grown to reveal many young men as sober curious (Carnegie, 2022), a trend reflecting progressive shifts in masculinities toward gender equity and equality (Oliffe et al., 2023; Oliffe, Rice, et al., 2019). Claims about NAB’s nutritional value, low caloric and low carb content, also resonate with many men’s self-health and well-being interests (Kozłowski et al., 2021). The health benefits of drinking NAB instead of alcoholic beverages include improved anxiety management (Franco et al., 2015) and better sleep quality (Franco et al., 2012, 2014), with some emergent evidence claiming decreased cardiovascular risk (Sancén et al., 2022), post-workout recovery enhancements (Graber-Stiehl, 2018) and therapeutic gains for a range of chronic illnesses (Osorio-Paz et al., 2020). Moreover, a recent U.S. study indicated that men who screened positive for alcohol use disorder self-reported that they consumed less alcohol because of their NAB use (Bowdring et al., 2024). Although Caballeria et al.’s (2022) earlier systematic review suggested that low or no alcoholic beers can increase cravings for alcohol in men experiencing alcohol use disorder, there may be some therapeutic gains over time as NAB use becomes more mainstream.

Of course, the specificities about which men are (and are not) drinking NAB is drawing market research. A longitudinal study in Finland (n = 47,066) indicated that high-income, well-educated men who already purchase large volumes of alcoholic beer were the primary purchasers of NAB (Katainen et al., 2023). Educated and affluent men in the United Kingdom and Europe have been reported as more likely to drink NAB compared with heavy drinkers or those with lower socio-economic status (Kokole et al., 2022). Canadian-based males aged <54 years are the most likely group to have purchased and consumed NAB (Narrative Research & Logit Group, 2023), whereas half of the U.S.-based NAB consumers are men >55 years old, amid 23% of the purchases being made by millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) (Jacobson, 2024). Similarly, in Australia, 36% of no and low-alcoholic beers are bought by millennial men (International Wine and Spirits Record [IWSR], 2023). What is unclear, however, is the extent to which men substitute with NAB, or use it in addition to alcoholic beer, and other alcoholic beverages and/or substances (Caballeria et al., 2022).

In summary, NAB quality and range, affirmational marketing, and implications for satiating and driving men’s demand reveal the alcoholic beer industry’s knowledge of, and responsiveness to their male consumer base. Implicit to men’s demand for NAB is how contemporary masculinities and gender relations can include their strength-based commitment to self-health. There are, however, uncertainties about the male market segmentation for NAB, men’s overall alcohol use, and the alcoholic beer industry’s underlying motivations around reducing the harms of alcohol use.

NAB Legislation and Policy Implications

This NAB legislation and policy implications section focuses on the Canadian commercial determinants of NAB, where the alcoholic beer industry’s responsiveness to marketing and supplying NAB has rallied somewhat unregulated (Statista, 2024). Underscoring legislation and policy as locale-specific, some country comparisons are made in discussing the visibility and positionality, and pricing and taxes for NAB in Canada. The NAB industry operates within lucrative alcoholic beer and soft-drink markets, with important legislation and policy implications. Consumer shifts to nonalcoholic drinks and the alcohol industry’s swift response to that emergent market were implicit in Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health (CGAH; Mazerolle, 2023). Specifically, the CGAH encouraged individuals to make healthier choices when it came to managing their alcohol consumption including a tip stating, “For every drink of alcohol, have one non-alcoholic drink.” Aligning with harm reduction, this recommendation offered an alternative for men who wish to pace their drinking and/or reduce their overall alcohol intake without abandoning social and/or cultural settings where alcohol may be present. Herewith, harm reduction refers to legislation, policy, and interventions that have the potential to minimize the negative social and health impacts of substance use, whether intentionally or not (Goodyear et al., 2023). Within this context, there is growing academic interest in researching the potential of NAB as a harm reduction strategy (Kokole et al., 2022; Miller et al., 2022).

Foremost, the visibility and positionality of NAB in the marketplace is complex with its dual alcoholic beer and soft-drink market residencies. In Canada, concerns have been raised that unregulated advertising and availability of NAB will create new settings where beer can be consumed and nondrinking groups targeted, with the net effect of the beer industry sustaining and likely growing its sales and profits. In particular, NAB may increase alcoholic beer brand recognition with its visibility in places (e.g., supermarkets), contexts (e.g., taking medication), and activities (e.g., driving, working, playing sports) where alcoholic beer (and its advertising) is prohibited (Corfe et al., 2020; Purves et al., 2022). Known as surrogate marketing, wherein NAB is packaged with the core branding of the regular strength product (e.g., Heineken 0.0), Critchlow et al. (2024) dually cautions against Alibi marketing, an approach focused on product type (e.g., NAB) without mentioning the alcoholic brand’s name. While Canada is deciding what information to include on alcoholic beer packaging (e.g., the absolute ethyl alcohol by volume [ABV] levels) and where alcohol can be sold (e.g., licensing and convenience store availability) (The Canadian Press, 2023), the visibility of NAB that shares branding with regular-strength alcoholic beer (i.e., surrogate marketing) has drawn concerns about brand stretching (Critchlow et al., 2024), and extending the reach (and harms) of alcohol (Corfe et al., 2020). The antidote to this in Norway is advertising bans that prohibit alcohol brand visibility irrespective of the ABV content, including NAB (Purves et al., 2022). There are concerns about the potential for predisposing young people to earlier alcohol use by exposing them to NAB marketing and/or consumption (Hou et al., 2023). While Canada does not currently have age-specific NAB legislation, the risk management for most states in the United States is that people below 21 years old cannot purchase NAB, but they can legally drink it. This somewhat awkward positionality reflects tensions for NAB’s twin presence in the alcoholic beer and soft drink markets.

Further to the lucrative soft-drink market, with its espoused isotonic, energizing, revitalizing, and probiotic qualities, NAB is the alcoholic beer industry’s entry point and flagship beverage. Comparatively, NAB is low in sugar and calories, features distinguishing it as a relatively healthy soft-drink option, and exempt from Canada’s sugary drink tax (Kozłowski et al., 2021). It is also interesting to note that Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc. (2022), a leading beverage company worldwide, has a $50 million minority share in the largest U.S.-based NAB-only producer, the Athletic brewing company. While NAB can be reasonably argued as contributing to the significant employment, labor income, and container recycling benefits in the soft-drink sector (Feng & Hamadi, 2023), the alcoholic beer and soft-drink industry cross-overs pose unique legislation and policy considerations.

Specific to pricing and taxes, there are many alcoholic beer industry beneficiaries including brewers and retailers as well as provincial/state and federal governments who collect substantial tax revenue. Canada’s heavily taxed alcoholic beer (and alcohol more broadly) has been framed as social responsibility, wherein the taxes collected by governments are used to offset, at least in part, the public health costs for treating its associated harms (Hohnstein, 2020). While NAB is exempt from alcoholic beer excise duty in Canada, it is considered to be beer for goods and services and harmonized sales taxes. These taxes, along with industry production costs and profit margins, contribute to alcoholic beer and NAB retail price parity (Hohnstein, 2020). Research confirms that NAB pricing significantly influences men’s decisions to switch from alcoholic beer, and Llopis et al. (2021) suggest lowering the price of NAB and setting a minimum unit price for alcoholic beverages to promote lower alcohol use. NAB tax breaks and alcoholic beer tax increases may be strategic for securing this retail price differential and, in turn, promoting the uptake of a healthier beer option. Also, related to pricing and taxes, the dominance of large alcoholic beer corporations has challenged the feasibility of many independent craft breweries (Latham, 2024). While some NAB-only craft brewers have emerged, most notably Athletic, Nonny, and Sober Carpenter, most of the prominent alcoholic beer companies have diversified to make NAB, effectively dominating that market. Incentivizing NAB-only brewers might aid the sector and contain pricing, while mitigating harm from subsidizing alcoholic beer companies, including those that are active in Surrogate and Alibi marketing.

Alcohol legislation and policy typically fails to differentiate public health regulations by gender (Emslie et al., 2024). For example, research with alcohol policy stakeholders in Canada, Sweden, and Australia indicated that empirical evidence connecting young men’s alcohol use and violence perpetration did not result in a gender-responsive intervention approach (Farrugia et al., 2022). Policymakers backgrounded attention to gender, and turned instead to more generic interventions including restricting alcohol availability on university campuses and at sporting events (Farrugia et al., 2022). Of course, legislation and policy that differentiates by gender risks stereotyping, discriminating, and othering individuals, with vilifying effects for people who are often already experiencing significant health inequities. NAB, though clearly requiring legislation and policy attention (Babor et al., 2022), offers a rare strength-based, community-driven, commercially responsive marketplace for policymakers to support men to have healthier beer consumption. Recognizing this potential, the U.K. Government (2019) is working with industry to further increase the availability of alcohol-free products through 2025. Endorsing this approach, the WHO’s (2010) global strategy to reduce alcohol-related harms highlights the importance of such country-level policy interventions.

In summary, Canadian legislation and policy has lagged behind the unprecedented NAB market growth, with visibility and positionality as well as pricing and taxes, emerging as key considerations for risk management and upstream interventions. To build and evaluate its potential for men’s harm reduction, there is a need to both regulate and incentivize NAB.

Discussion and Conclusion

Returning to the question posed in the title of the current article, we conclude by discussing the redemption, revenue, and men’s harm reduction potentials within the commercial determinants of NAB. First, in terms of redemption, NAB will not undo the historical, nor negate the ongoing harms of the alcoholic beer industry. There is indeed well-founded suspicions and cynicism that NAB is yet another commercial strategy for increasing beer consumption and industry profits. Reflecting the tactics of health-harming industries for developing and distributing gateway and decoy products, NAB may well be a market hold lying in wait for alcoholic beer to come back into fashion. Moreover, NAB’s soft-drink status has afforded the alcoholic beer industry entry to another lucrative market, where somewhat ironically, it is niche in responding to consumer demand for relatively healthy (i.e., low sugar and calories) beverages. These cautions made, there may be some provisional redemptions in the affirmational marketing for men drinking NAB, an act that might be reasonably acknowledged as enlisting some essence of corporate responsibility. In terms of redemption for the alcoholic beer industry’s role in men’s ill health, including male suicide risk, the moderating and/or mediating effects of NAB for reducing men’s alcohol use is a critically important empirical question. U.K. research indicated that increasing the availability of low-ABV beer and reducing the overall mean ABV in beer offerings reduced the grams of alcohol in pub beer sales (Anderson et al., 2020). In the United Kingdom, an equal percentage (40%) of respondents (comprising a mixed male and female sample) cut back, or reported no change to their alcohol use, with a significant proportion drinking nonalcoholic or low-alcoholic drinks on top of, rather than instead of stronger alcoholic beverages (Corfe et al., 2020). Beyond market research reporting consumer patterns to distinguish high-end consumers and profits, there is a need for future research to conduct longitudinal studies that empirically map NAB within and across specific locales to evaluate legislation and policy, and report linkages to men’s health outcomes including male suicide risk. In summary, while redemption for the alcoholic beer industry is beyond NAB, there are vitally important harm reduction opportunities for a beer makeover that separates taste and alcohol (Nicholls, 2024).

Second, it is given that revenue is the driver and primary commercial determinant of NAB in neoliberal markets. Research indicates NAB availability in bars and pubs reduces the sales of alcoholic beer by up to 5%, without impacting industry revenue, while conceivably bestowing a positive impact on public health (De-Loyde et al., 2024). To incentivize NAB use at a time of unending inflation and consumer taxes, pricing needs to be fixed lower than alcoholic beer—especially if we hope to attract men who experience low socio-economic status and other related marginalities. Reducing NAB sales tax and waiving NAB gratuities in hospitality tip-centric and tip-flation countries such as Canada (Cabano & Attari, 2023) may further increase demand and reduce alcohol consumption. Building on Norway’s legislation for prohibiting the advertising of alcohol brands (Purves et al., 2022), there are also likely benefits to promoting NAB-only craft brewers to more evenly distribute the market share for socially responsible breweries. Transparent collection and strategic redistribution of alcoholic beer and NAB tax revenue to fund longitudinal research focused on men’s alcohol use and reducing associated harms, including male suicide risk, are also critically important budget lines for evaluating commercial and wider structural determinants. Relatedly, there is support for the WHO to guide national governments to more evenly regulate and collect higher taxes from transnational corporations who produce harmful commodities (Marten et al., 2018), with further recommendations for distributing those tax revenues to finance public health care services (Friel et al., 2023). That Canada’s National Suicide Prevention Action Plan 2024–2027 (Government of Canada, 2024) lists alcohol and other substance use as an individual risk factor in mentioning that 75% of the suicides in Canada are males ahead of spotlighting suicide risk by occupation (e.g., public safety personnel and first responders) underscores the need for a deliberate gender-responsive suite of interventions to address men’s alcohol use and male suicide risk.

Third, the men’s harm reduction potential of NAB, along with some health promotion benefits, has for the most part, emerged from shifting male consumption patterns. In these fundamental commercial supply and demand economics, NAB has surfaced as a feasible and fashionable option (Ribeiro et al., 2016) shaping, and shaped by contemporary masculinities (Burrows et al., 2023). Bought and sold as newfound freedoms, NAB’s popularity could be imagined as a utopic generational turning of the male herd toward reduced alcohol use, a condition perhaps potentiated by post-COVID temporalities prizing men’s sobriety over intoxication. Reminders abound here for men’s health promoters to know their audience rather than rely on the rhetoric of traditional masculinity, a condition (and historical, social trope) synonymous with manly alcohol use and overuse. While ever hopeful, attribution of NAB for men’s reduced alcohol and other substance use cannot be made. That said and conceded, there is a clear need to know and strategically act on the NAB market segments. For example, NCSolutions (2024) suggests that 61% of Gen Zers (born between 1997 and 2012) and 49% of Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) in the United States are trying to drink less. In addition, reports indicate that 10% of the people in the United States are heavy drinkers, 60% barely drink, and 30% do not use alcohol (Paiella, 2023). Within these demographics, nondrinker males need to be sustained (and ideally grown) with the tailoring of messaging to subgroups who are diversely open to NAB. That beer makers and merchants can profit from selling harm reduction to men might also prompt health promoters to responsively build approaches with a view to scaling and sustaining gender-responsive programs that are transparently funded by taxes and industry.

In conclusion, alcohol-related harms will never be reduced through industry self-regulation (Miller et al., 2011), and NAB should be understood as a key part of the commercial alcoholic beer industry. Offering a unique opportunity for the interests of public health (alcohol-related harm reduction) and the private sector (profit growth) to align (Rehm et al., 2016), NAB may tackle some alcohol-related harms at the population level; however, NAB promotion should be utilized as a lever for supporting men to have healthier relationships with alcohol and other substances (Corfe et al., 2020). In closing, the commercial determinants of NAB have some redemption, revenue, and men’s harm reduction potentials, but the sum and parts of those possible gains are indelibly linked, and deeply reliant on empirically informed and formally evaluated legislation and policy that both regulates and incentivizes NAB.