Alcohol companies and industry-funded bodies mounted a ‘coordinated lobbying campaign to force the removal’ of alcohol marketing restrictions from the government’s 10-year health plan, says a new report from the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS). The plan was widely criticised for its lack of policies to address alcohol harm.
Analysis of Freedom of Information (FOI) documents by IAS shows that companies and trade groups – including Diageo, Budweiser, Heineken and the Portman Group – wrote directly to the health secretary, chancellor and business secretary in the days leading up to the publication of Fit for the future: 10-year health plan for England, which was widely expected to include measures to restrict alcohol marketing. However, despite leaks to the media and confirmation from the Department of Health and Social Care, the measures were not included in the final plan.
IAS looked at almost 50 documents, with ‘strikingly similar’ arguments and language as well as coordinated timing – ‘pointing to a concerted industry effort to derail health policy’, it says. The FOI disclosures revealed alcohol companies explicitly asking the chancellor to ‘pressure’ the health secretary to drop the proposed marketing restrictions, it states, despite them being ‘supported by strong international evidence and aligned with NHS prevention goals’. The findings ‘raise serious concerns about the government’s continued treatment of the alcohol industry as a stakeholder in public health, despite evidence that such partnerships are ineffective and risk regulatory capture’, IAS states.
‘These documents reveal alcohol companies doing exactly what we might expect but should never accept: lobbying aggressively and out of sight to block public‑health measures that threaten their profits – even when those measures were part of an NHS plan to prevent illness and save lives,’ said IAS chief executive Dr Katherine Severi. ‘We cannot allow this pattern to continue. With the industry causing such significant harm, the government must put guardrails in place to protect the remaining plans to reduce alcohol harm, including mandatory labelling and lowering the drink-drive limit. Private profit must never outweigh public safety, and policy decisions must be rooted in independent evidence and the public interest.’
Meanwhile, there are now 43,000 15-24-year-olds in Ireland living with alcohol dependence, according to a report from Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI). The report was an ‘eye opener in terms of the scale and trajectory of youth drinking in Ireland, which has increased by 3 per cent in the past year alone,’ said AAI CEO Dr Sheila Gilheany. ‘Alcohol remains Ireland’s largest drug problem both for young people and the wider population, with significant health impacts. This is not surprising given the saturation levels of alcohol marketing to which they are exposed, particularly online.’ Alcohol was one of the country’s most heavily marketed products, she said, with the annual marketing spend ‘conservatively estimated’ at EUR 115m.
Now you see it, now you don’t: how alcohol industry interference made marketing restrictions disappear from the 10-year health plan available here
Youth drinking in Ireland: what’s the real picture available here