Institute of Alcohol Studies

The Institute of Alcohol Studies is an anti-alcohol organisation, a Fakecharity, and is the trading arm of another charity - the Alliance House Foundation. The latter has had numerous names in the past, later ones were changed to make the organisation seem less prudish and puritanical:

20 July 1852 - The National League for the Total and Legal Suppression of Intemperance was formed by Nathaniel Card - a Quaker and previously a member of the Manchester and Salford Temperance Society. Rather than espouse temperance and teetotalism, they aimed for actual legislation to ban alcohol completely.

14 Feb 1853 - The name changed to the United Kingdom Alliance for the Suppression of the Traffic in all Intoxicating Liquors.

1942 - The organisation became a limited company and changed its name to UK Temperance Alliance Ltd

2003 - Change of name again to Alliance House Foundation

Complaint to IPSO

On 30th May 2016, The Times published an article titled "Anti-drink lobby drew up official safety limits" in which it claimed that

The report to Britain’s chief medical officers, who provoked an outcry when they announced the new limit in January, did not mention that four key figures behind it were closely associated with the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS), a lobby group financed by the temperance movement.

The four alluded to were Linda Bauld, Gerard Hastings, Katherine Brown and Petra Meier. Also present were Ian Gilmore and Nick Sheron, founders of the Alcohol Health Alliance.

As a result of the paper's story, the head of Institute of Alcohol Studies, Katherine Brown complained about her organisation's portrayal, claiming that

no members of the [guidelines development group] were “anti-alcohol lobbyists”, nor do they have any links to “anti-alcohol organisations”.

IPSO, however was having none of it and threw the complaint out, not upheld.