Alcohol Alert – June 2021

Hello and welcome to the Alcohol Alert, brought to you by The Institute of Alcohol Studies.

In this edition:

* IAS seminar on Alcohol and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

* Extensive OECD publication details the investment case for alcohol control policies 🎵 Podcast feature 🎵

* New minimum unit pricing studies in Scotland bolster the argument for its implementation 🎵 Podcast feature 🎵

* Confusion over WHO global alcohol action plan 🎵 Podcast feature 🎵

* Brain imaging study suggests there is no safe level of alcohol consumption for brain health

* Study highlights the prevalence of alcohol advertising in the Rugby Six Nations

* Parliament debates labelling and the Misuse of Drugs Act

We hope you enjoy our roundup of stories below: please feel free to share. Thank you.

Alcohol and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

IAS sustainability series, seminar 1. Seminar speakers:

* Chair: Kristina Sperkova, Movendi International

* Dudley Tarlton, United Nations Development Programme

* Professor Jeff Collin, University of Edinburgh

* Aadielah Maker Diedericks, South African Alcohol Policy Alliance

The Institute of Alcohol Studies hosted the first seminar in its four-part series on alcohol and sustainability, 10 June 2021. The seminar focused on the impact of alcohol on the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the opportunities for improved alcohol policy arising from the Goals.

Goal 3.5 explicitly targets alcohol, with the commitment to ‘Strengthen the prevention of treatment of substance abuse, including…harmful use of alcohol’. Beyond that, alcohol has been identified as an obstacle to achieving 14 of the 17 SDGs, which can be seen as social, environmental, and economic.

Social goals such as ending poverty, hunger, achieving gender equality and maintaining peace and justice, are all affected by alcohol harm. Kristina Sperkova, President of Movendi International, highlighted that alcohol pushes people into poverty and keeps many there, and consumes spending that would otherwise be used on education and food. There are many studies that demonstrate the link between alcohol use and violence, particularly between young men and relating to domestic violence.

Ms Sperkova detailed the high environmental cost of alcohol production. Land required to grow crops for alcohol reduces biodiversity. Huge amounts of water are used for alcohol production, with 870 litres of water needed to produce one litre of wine. She pointed out that alcohol is often produced in places that have scarce water supplies, to serve the desires of higher income countries that have an abundance of water.

The economic burden of alcohol use across the world is enormous, with high-income countries seeing annual losses of between 1.4% and 1.7% of GDP due to alcohol harm. Much of this is due to the loss of productivity. In England in 2015, 167,000 working years were lost due to alcohol. It was suggested that more effective alcohol control policies would not only reduce the harm but would also help finance sustainable development.

The investment case

Dudley Tarlton, Programme Specialist at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), introduced the work UNDP is doing in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), to present the case for improving and implementing effective alcohol policies, with economic rationale being the main driver.

WHO’s SAFER initiative details the five most cost-effective interventions to reduce harm. Mr Tarlton stated that these five interventions would give a 5.8% return on investment.  

Modelling by UNDP across 12 countries including Russia, Turkey, and Ethiopia, shows that investing in WHO’s recommended prevention measures would generate 19 billion USD over the next 15 years – mainly due to productivity gain – and 865,000 deaths would be averted.

UNDP is also looking into investment cases relating to alcohol-attributable deaths from causes such as liver cirrhosis, road injuries, tuberculosis, and HIV. They are drafting toolkits for countries to take up these policies and could be instrumental in getting revenue to help close covid-related fiscal gaps.

As lower socioeconomic groups would disproportionately benefit from the health benefits of increased alcohol taxes, Mr Tarlton highlighted that part of Goal 10 on reducing health inequalities would be targeted by such taxes.

The obstacle of the alcohol industry

Professor Jeff Collin, Edinburgh University, posited how the alcohol industry has positioned itself as aligned with the SDGs and as engines of development. The International Alliance for Responsible Drinking (IARD) has a toolkit for governments on how to build partnerships with the alcohol industry. Diageo’s ‘Business Avengers’ coalition highlights their role in aiming to achieve the SDGs. Namibian Breweries (NBL) has listed out which SDGs it is helping, including SDG 3: “NBL has a responsibility to minimise harmful alcohol consumption.”

Prof Collin explained that the industry is using the commitment of governments and organisations to SDG 17 – ‘Partnerships for the Goals’ – to push their own strategic agenda, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pre-pandemic, Diageo collaborated with CARE to address barriers to gender inclusion in the alcohol giant’s supply chain. Following the outbreak of the pandemic, Diageo supported CARE’s emergency response, giving clean water supplies, hygiene kits, and food.

According to Prof Collin’s work, the alcohol industry is using corporate social investment (CSI) and philanthropy to shape policy and pursue partnerships, to further its strategic interests. This is especially true in its targeting of women in developing countries, who are seen as a key emerging market. Pernod Ricard India launched an initiative around women entrepreneurs, which aptly shows the two faces of alcohol philanthropy, with the company’s CMO Kartik Mohindra stating:

“It is quintessential for brands to create products that appeal to them [women]. And if they don’t have more women in senior leadership roles, they are not likely to have the significant insights needed to tap into the highly sensitive minds of their ever-growing numbers of female consumers.”

In Southern Africa – as Aadielah Maker Diedericks of the Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance (SAAPA) discussed – there are particularly striking examples of industry-government partnerships and conflicts of interest, with civil society in the region perceiving Big Alcohol’s involvement in the region as a form of neo-colonisation.

Ms Diedericks explained that policy makers are often on the boards of alcohol companies in the region, that governments hold shares in the industry, and the industry’s agenda is often successfully pushed through. Very few Southern African countries are taking on issues of marketing, pricing, and availability, instead focusing on road safety and underage drinking.

Both Prof Collin and Ms Diedericks said that SDG 17 has confused countries, with governments thinking the only relationship with the alcohol industry is one of partnership, ignoring potential conflicts of interest.

South Africa case study

South Africa has seen intense lobbying by the industry in recent months, with Ms Diedericks saying that they are using the narrative of job promotion to demonstrate their value. This is despite R246billion being spent on alcohol harm compared to R97billion in revenue.

The industry has campaigned extensively around the idea of economic loss associated with alcohol control policies, using dubious research to back up their claims. This comes at a time of high unemployment rate in South Africa and therefore gets a lot of media attention.

Ms Diedericks described the relationship between industry and South Africa’s government as “abusive” due to the industry threatening disinvestment in the country if there were controls to alcohol availability.

What next?

The speakers argued that the SDGs need to be used better as a rallying point for alcohol control measures. SDG 17 in particular should be used to develop policy coherence and that the building of coordinated approaches across other unhealthy commodities, such as junk food, should be