WHO Europe’s latest report, Empowering public health advocates to navigate alcohol policy challenges: alcohol policy playbook, supports policymakers, advocates, and public health professions to identify alcohol industry arguments and to prioritise public health evidence. Ultimately, the aim is to reduce alcohol related harms, improve health outcomes, and reduce the financial burden of alcohol.
IAS’s Chief Executive, Dr Katherine Severi, welcomed the report:
The Institute of Alcohol Studies is proud to endorse the WHO’s new Alcohol Policy Playbook, an invaluable resource that exposes the tension between industry profits and the health of nations. This Playbook equips policymakers to confront industry influence head-on, providing evidence-based insights that dispel the myths surrounding alcohol’s supposed benefits and underscore its profound health harms.
As IAS’s good governance policy on interactions with the alcohol industry emphasises, transparency and integrity are critical to protecting public health. Put simply: we will not make progress on public health if the alcohol industry’s influence on policymaking is not curtailed, as was done with the tobacco industry to great success. By acting decisively with the Playbook’s guidance, UK policymakers – and politicians across the world – can prioritise public health, free from the shadow of corporate interests.
The report highlights how the alcohol industry frames problems compared to the public health perspective. For instance, it shows that the industry typically portrays alcohol problems as being “confined to a small minority of problem drinkers and focus attention on groups that engage in alcohol abuse”. However, in reality:
Alcohol-caused harms are spread across populations and can be experienced both by people who use alcohol and by those who do not.
In the case of people who use alcohol, recent evidence indicates that, for both health and social harms, there is a risk even at low consumption levels. For example, in the European Union (EU), alcohol consumption is estimated to be the cause of 17% of the seven alcohol-related cancer types. Light to moderate alcohol consumption (less than 20g of pure alcohol per day) was associated with 13.3% of these cases, equivalent to nearly 23,000 new cancer cases in 2017.
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, Chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance, said the Playbook was an important tool for UK policymakers:
This Playbook highlights the critical need for independence of profit-driven companies when developing alcohol policies and health initiatives. The alcohol industry, by its nature, aims to maximise profits through increased alcohol consumption, which directly conflicts with public health objectives that seek to reduce harm caused by drinking. Evidence clearly shows that when the alcohol industry is involved in public health policymaking, conflicts of interest arise, leading to policies that favour commercial bottom-lines over public health priorities.
To ensure decisions are made solely to reduce harm and advance public health, it is essential that policymakers are savvy to common industry arguments and are equipped to keep the alcohol industry at arm’s length. This Playbook aims to do just that, serving as an important tool for policymakers in the UK and worldwide in developing effective policies to reduce alcohol-related harm.