Summary

The beverage alcohol industry's social aspects organizations:
A public health warning

Over the last twenty years the beverage alcohol industry has set up and funded social aspects organizations to manage issues that may be detrimental to its business. Social aspects organizations operate at the global level (International Center for Alcohol Policies), the European level (The Amsterdam Group), and at the country level, in high, middle and low income countries. They aim to manage issues by:

• Attempting to influence the alcohol policies of national and international governmental and integrational organizations;

• Becoming members of relevant non-alcohol specific organizations and committees to broaden policy influence and respectability;

• Recruiting scientists, hosting conferences and promoting high profile publications;

• Creating social aspects organizations in emerging markets and low income countries; and

• Preparing and promoting consensus statements and codes of practice.

Social aspects organizations hold five main viewpoints which on inspection confirm their overall aim, which is to benefit their funding body, the beverage alcohol industry, rather than to benefit public health or the public good.

• The view that patterns of drinking are the best basis for alcohol policies fails to recognize that the purpose of alcohol policy is to reduce the harm done by alcohol and that this can only be effectively achieved by addressing both the volume of alcohol consumed as well as the way in which it is consumed.

• The view that responsible drinking can be learned and that this should be the cornerstone of alcohol policy fails to recognize that without addressing the social environment in which the alcohol is consumed (including policy on the price, availability and marketing of alcohol products) alcohol policies based on individual responsibility are ineffective in reducing harm.

• The view of social aspects organizations that they have an equal place at the policy table fails to recognize that the evidence that they bring to the table is not impartial and favours the commercial interest of the beverage alcohol industry rather than the public good.

• The view that the marketing of alcoholic beverages should be regulated by the beverage alcohol industry itself is inherently unlikely to work, since the essence of self-regulation is that compliance with codes is voluntary and the industry has blatantly, consistently and extensively broken its own codes in all areas of the world, with no evidence that this has improved over recent years.

• The view that alcohol, despite its potential for abuse, confers a net benefit to society fails to acknowledge that, even allowing for the possible protective effects of alcohol consumption, alcohol ranks as one of the highest causes of disease burden in the world on a par with measles, tuberculosis and malaria combined, with a cost to Europe of between 2% and 5% of gross domestic product.