Alcohol Alert – June 2021 Alcohol Alert Podcast

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-attribu