In a speech last week at the 8th Global Conference on Health Promotion, held in Helsinki, Finland, WHO Director Margaret Chan observed that “efforts to prevent non-communicable diseases go against the business interests of powerful economic operators…It is not just Big Tobacco anymore. Public health must also contend with Big Food, Big Soda, and Big Alcohol. All of these industries fear regulation, and protect themselves by using the same tactics.”
Nutrition Labels on Alcohol? It’s the Company’s Choice
Alcohol beverages soon could have nutritional labels like those on food packaging, but only if the producers want to put them there. The Associated Press reports that the Treasury Department, which regulates alcohol, said last week that beer, wine and spirits companies can use labels that include serving size, servings per container, calories, carbohydrates, protein and fat per serving. Such package labels have never before been approved. The labels are voluntary, so it will be up to beverage companies to decide whether to use them on their products. The decision is a temporary, first step while the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau continues to consider final rules on alcohol labels. Rules proposed in 2007 would have made labels mandatory, but the agency never made the rules final.
Turkey Considers Tighter Limits on Alcohol Sale and Consumption
Reuters reports that the Turkish government has prepared a draft law that would ban advertising alcoholic drinks in what officials say is an effort to protect children but could further divide religious and secularist Turks.
Community coalitions can reduce density of alcohol outlets
A new report in Preventing Chronic Disease by CHW writer David Jernigan and his colleagues examines the role of community coalitions in reducing the density of alcohol outlets. They conclude that “public health agencies have a vital and necessary role to play in efforts to reduce alcohol outlet density. They are often unaware of the potential of this strategy and have strong potential partners in the thousands of community coalitions nationwide that are focused on reducing alcohol-related problems.”
Google stops alcohol ads
Search engine operator and online marketing company Google has decided to stop advertisements of alcohol and alcoholic beverages in Finland from Tuesday, reported the Financial Times. The decision follows introduction of a new rule by Google in its advertisement policy that bans advertisement of alcoholic products. The ban will be also applicable in China, Poland, Vietnam, and South Korea. Google decided to ban advertisements of alcoholic products on its own volition, its product manager Sami Kankkuan said, adding that no country had directed them in this regard.
Brand-specific consumption of alcohol among underage youth in the United States
A new article in Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research reports that underage youth alcohol consumption, although spread out over several alcoholic beverage types, is concentrated among a relatively small number of alcohol brands. The alcohol brands with highest prevalence of past 30-day consumption by youth were Bud Light (27.9%), Smirnoff malt beverages (17.0%), and Budweiser (14.6%). The authors conclude that this finding has important implications for alcohol research, practice, and policy.
Profits and pandemics: prevention of harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink industries
The 2011 UN high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) called for multisectoral action including with the private sector and industry. However, through the sale and promotion of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink (unhealthy commodities), transnational corporations are major drivers of global epidemics of NCDs. In a new article in Lancet, investigators from the The Lancet NCD Action Group examine what role these industries have in NCD prevention and control. They emphasize the rise in sales of these unhealthy commodities in low-income and middle-income countries, and consider the common strategies that the transnational corporations use to undermine NCD prevention and control.
Public health response to global alcohol producers’ attempts to implement WHO global strategy on alcohol
Global Alcohol Policy Alliance
On October 8, 2012, thirteen of world’s largest alcohol producers issued a set of commitments to reduce the harmful use of alcohol worldwide, ostensibly in support of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2010 Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol. As an independent coalition of public health professionals, health scientists and NGO representatives, we are submitting this public Statement of Concern to the WHO Secretariat in response to the activities of the global alcohol producers. Based on their lack of support for effective alcohol policies, misinterpretation of the Global Strategy’s provisions, and their lobbying against effective public health measures, we believe that the alcohol industry’s inappropriate commitments must be met with a united response from global health community.
Our reservations can be summarized as follows:
- The commitments are based on questionable assumptions, as stated in the signatories’ Preamble.
- The actions proposed in the five commitments are weak, rarely evidence-based and are unlikely to reduce harmful alcohol use.
- Prior initiatives advanced by the alcohol industry as contributions to the WHO Global Strategy have major limitations from a public health perspective.
- The signatories are misrepresenting their roles with respect to the implementation of the WHO Global Strategy.
This Statement calls upon WHO and its Regional Offices to: clarify the roles and responsibilities of “economic operators” in the implementation of the WHO Global Strategy; implement stronger conflict of interest policies and continue to avoid partnerships with the commercial alcohol industry, its “social aspects” organizations and other groups funded by the commercial alcohol industry.
Member States are urged to ensure resources are available to provide evidence based input to policy development which is independent of commercial and vested interests. They are also encouraged to establish funding sources independent of commercial and other vested interests to carry out research and public health advocacy work.
In addition, we recommend that the global alcohol producers refrain from engagement in health-related prevention, treatment, research and traffic safety activities, as these tend to be ineffective, self-serving and competitive with the activities of the WHO and the public health community. The global producers are encouraged to cease their opposition to effective, evidence-based alcohol policies, and refrain from product innovations that have high abuse potential and appeal primarily to youth and other vulnerable groups.
Finally, we recommend that the public health community avoid funding from industry sources for prevention, research and information dissemination activities, refrain from any form of association with industry education programs, and insist on industry support for evidence-based policies.
It is concluded that the global producers’ activities in support of the WHO Global Strategy are compromising the work of public health experts, the WHO, its regional offices, and the NGOs working in the public health area to deal with the global burden of disease attributable to alcohol. Unhealthy commodity industries such as the global alcohol producers should have no role in the formation of national and international public health policies.
The full statement is available here.
Drafting Committee:
Professor Thomas F. Babor, USA
Ms Katherine Brown, UK
Professor David Jernigan, USA
Dr Nazarius Mbona Tumwesigye, Uganda
Professor Gerard Hastings, UK
Dr Ronaldo Laranjeira, Brazil
Professor Isidore Obot, Nigeria
Mr Sven-Olov Carlsson, Sweden
Dr Evelyn Gillan, UK
Professor Wei Hao, China
Mr Øystein Bakke, Norway
Professor Mike Daube, Australia
Ms Kate Robaina, USA
Professor Peter G. Miller,Australia
Professor Peter Anderson, UK
Dr Aurelijus Veryga, Lithuania
Professor S Casswell,New Zealand
Professor Sungsoo Chun, South Korea
Oglala Sioux Tribe ponders option after suit against beer sellers and breweries dismissed
The Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, whose federal lawsuit against four Nebraska beer sellers and some of the nation’s biggest breweries was dismissed this week, may refile the lawsuit in state court, the tribe’s attorney told the Associated Press. Tom White, an Omaha-based attorney for the tribe, said he’ll urge the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation’s council to continue with its lawsuit against the alcohol manufacturers and distributors, and four retailers in Whiteclay, Neb. The town of about a dozen residents on the dry reservation’s border sold the equivalent of 4.3 million 12-ounce cans of beer last year.
Is the New York Post now an arm of the alcohol lobby?
Cross posted from Appetite for Profit
Alcohol policy doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it should. Federal estimates are that excessive alcohol consumption costs us $223 billion a year, not to mention the 79,000 deaths nationally. And yet on the rare occasion a political leader tries to even talk about the need to stem the tide of alcohol-related harm, all hell can break loose. This is true especially in New York, where the governor can be found hosting summits pledging to help promote beer and wine produced in the state. No wonder that New York State, at a mere 30 cents per gallon, has one of the lowest rates of wine excise taxes in the nation and at only 14 cents a gallon, one of the lowest on beer.
So when the New York Health State Department of Health recently released its “prevention agenda” for the next five years, perhaps it should come as no surprise that politics once again trumped public health. And yet, the way it happened is still shameful and alarming.
The action plan, written by a committee of health professionals, is intended to “serve as the blueprint for state and local community action to improve the health of New Yorkers and address health disparities.” In the draft version released in November, in the section to “promote mental health and prevent substance abuse” was the following language (page 10):
Increase evidence-based environmental strategies that prevent and reduce underage drinking, such as:
- Increase taxation on alcohol sales.
- Decrease alcohol outlet density.
- Increase motor vehicle sobriety checkpoints.
- Alcohol outlet compliance checks; alcohol outlet server/seller training.
Nothing too radical here: just a few policy ideas stemming from decades of scientific research on the most effective ways to reduce alcohol harm.
Enter the New York Post. In an alarmist December 3 article, Carl Campanile wrote:
Critics are furious with the proposals, which they said are another example of health zealots run amok. “It’s one gigantic nanny state we’re dealing with here,” fumed New York Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long, a former Brooklyn liquor-store owner.
The very next day, the Post ran a celebratory article taking credit for how Governor Cuomo “shot down” the state health department’s proposals. “The governor doesn’t support raising this tax, or the other measures,” state Health Department spokesman Bill Schwarz told the Post, which also boasted:
The rejection from Cuomo’s office came hours after The Post reported the state Public Health and Health Planning Council was pushing the proposal in its five-year “Prevention Agenda” for 2013-2017. But state Health Commissioner Dr. Nirav Shah will request that the anti-booze provisions be dropped from the plan in a vote Thursday because they are “contrary” to Cuomo’s position.
Sure enough, the health commissioner played the good soldier and caved to his boss’s political will. In the final version of the document released this month is this more vague and tepid language (p. 11):
Consider evidence based strategies to reduce underage drinking such as those promulgated by the U.S. Surgeon General and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To recap: A panel of independent health professionals made scientifically-sound policy recommendations in a planning document only meant to guide local decision-making, not even close to being an actual policy agenda. A local rag got wind of it, blew it out of proportion, got the governor’s office to place a phone call to the health commissioner, who in turn, scrubbed the document.
And this isn’t the first time the Rupert Murdoch-owned Post has influenced alcohol-related public health. Last January, the same “reporter” Carl Campanile wrote this incendiary article about alcohol policy in New York City, where Mayor Bloomberg is a constant butt of jokes over his willingness to put public health over profits. Same outrage, same result. The city quickly backed off its alcohol prevention agenda.
So the question is when did the New York Post become a de facto arm of the alcohol lobby?
Nicholas Freudenberg is Distinguished Professor of Urban Public Health at Hunter College, City University of New York. He told me this episode is “an ominous reminder of how often profit trumps health.” He added:
That a Governor with political ambitions thinks it’s more important to placate the alcohol industry than take action to reduce a leading cause of premature death and preventable illness and injury is disturbing. That a health commissioner accepts this policy interference is equally disappointing.
No wonder we can’t get anywhere on alcohol policy in New York, or anywhere else for that matter.
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