Alcohol industry subverting science to prevent greater regulation, study finds

 

Researchers say industry’s lobbying of politicians and involvement in policy discussions obstructing health outcomes

 

Source: The Guardian

Melissa Davey

31 January 2017

 

The alcohol industry makes claims to governments that contradict and obfuscate science in an attempt to influence marketing regulations and prevent more stringent controls on products, an Australian study has found.

 

An author of the paper, Prof Kypros Kypri, said the findings showed that alcohol industry lobbying of politicians and involvement in discussions about policy were the most significant obstacles to evidence-based health.

 

Researchers led by Deakin University in Geelong reviewed all alcohol industry submissions made to a government review of alcohol marketing regulations. The review focused on the exposure of children to alcohol and the effectiveness of industry self-regulation.

 

The industry used tactics similar to those used by big tobacco to oppose increased regulation, the analysis found. Like big tobacco, the alcohol industry claimed regulation would be redundant because it was selling a legal product and self-regulation was already occurring; that there was insufficient evidence to link the marketing of alcohol products to increased alcohol consumption; that regulation would have unintended negative consequences on employment and the economy; and that regulation was questionable legally.

 

Kypri, from the University of Newcastle’s school of medicine and public health, said there were also other tactics used by the alcohol industry, including claiming that companies were socially responsible because of their involvement in responsible drinking campaigns and making recommendations for alternative strategies that the government could use to address the section of society that drinks heavily, instead of “punishing the majority”.

 

“By emphasising the idea that government regulation isn’t neccesary, the alcohol industry is still fighting scientific evidence and casting doubt,” Kypri said.

 

“They attempt to subvert the science because the science is quite worrying for them. In the past the alcohol industry has claimed alcohol is different to tobacco because there is a safe level of consumption but even that is now up for debate.

 

“While the tobacco industry can’t argue against the science anymore, the alcohol industry continues to, even though people don’t die from tobacco overdose but they do from drinking and they don’t become violent when they smoke but they do when they drink.”

 

He said that, while the alcohol industry and its representatives should be entitled to have a say, the industry had no place around the table when it came to developing health policy.

 

Kypri said he was shocked in 2014 when he attended an intergovernmental committee on drug policy meeting on alcohol-related violence and harm, only to find senior representatives from numerous alcohol groups at the meeting. “I will not sit in a room with the alcohol industry to develop health policy,” he said.

 

The research, published in the international scientific journal PLOS One, concluded that continuing to engage industry stakeholders in public health discussions would only give alcohol lobbyists more opportunity to present unscientific claims.

 

The executive director of Alcohol Beverages Australia, Fergus Taylor, said the industry stood by its government submissions.

 

“The taxpayer-funded PLOS paper is an attempt by well-known anti-alcohol activists to discredit this research – which the industry uses to provide balance and evidence to the public debate – and demonise alcohol consumption, while ignoring its established health benefits,” he said.

 

But a co-chair of the National Alliance for Action on Alcohol, the trauma surgeon Dr John Crozier, described the research from Kypri and his colleagues as “exceptional”, saying it was further evidence that removing the alcohol industry from policy discussions was “imperative”.

 

On Wednesday the alliance released its annual analysis of state, territory and federal government alcohol policy, announcing that the Northern Territory was the worst at using evidence to keep people safe from preventable alcohol-related harm.

 

For the past two years, the alliance has given the title of worst performing government to the federal government.

 

The alcohol policy scorecard judges how well state and territory governments are using the scientific evidence to implement policy and protect their residents from alcohol-related harm.

 

Crozier said the scrapping of the banned drinkers register by the previous NT government, despite evidence that it was effective and leading to reduced hospital admissions, had harmed its score. The register required all purchasers of alcohol to have their identification scanned against a database of problem drinkers.

 

The NT health minister, Natasha Fyles, said she agreed with the alliance’s assessment. She said the Labor government was committed to reintroducing the banned drinkers register by September.

 

“Since coming to government in late August last year we have already capped takeaway alcohol licences, limited the shopfront space of takeaway alcohol outlets to 400 sq m and started the process of reviewing and changing the licensing system,” Fyles said.

 

Takeaway licences would now only be considered if associated with a restaurant in an accommodation service or in new suburbs, she said.