The Constitutional Council has rejected an amendment to the Loi Evin that would potentially have initiated the end of France’s position in the top of the world’s countries with the strongest alcohol marketing restrictions. France’s highest lawmaking body has rejected the amendment, which had already been approved by Parliament, because it deemed the plans to … Read More →
Earlier this month the Welsh government published its plans for minimum pricing. The plans are based on research suggesting that a minimum charge of 50p per unit would save nearly £900m over 20 years by cutting crime and illness, with 50 fewer deaths a year. Ministers said they were committed to using their powers to … Read More →
New Canadian research finds crimes, including murders, sexual assaults and drink-driving, dropped 9% over a decade as authorities in British Columbia increased prices by 10%. The conclusions fuel the debate about the need for minimum unit pricing. The research, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, shows crimes, including violent assaults, fell … Read More →
The BBC reports that the British Medical Association (BMA) in Scotland has called for alcohol advertising at events aimed at children to be banned. This call is a reaction to a bill currently before the Health and Sport Committee of the Scottish Parliament. The BMA said it hoped the debate would draw attention to the … Read More →
Twenty public health organisations have resigned from the European Alcohol and Health Forum (EAHF), a stakeholder platform, to protest against the European Commission’s refusal to submit a new alcohol strategy. In an open letter sent to Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, the NGOs express “deep concern” that the Commission has no intention of developing a comprehensive … Read More →
Earlier this month, the EU’s Health and Food Safety Commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, said there is no intention of submitting a new strategy to reduce alcohol-related harm in Europe. Instead it’s proposed to tackle alcohol-related harm as part of a broad range of “risk factors” affecting chronic diseases. The EU’s latest strategy to tackle alcohol abuse … Read More →
Professor Frank Murray, president of the Royal College of Physicians Ireland, said for minimum unit pricing to be effective in Ireland, the unit price of alcohol should be at least €1, the same as a litre of milk. Murray, who is also a liver decease expert in Beaumont Hospital Dublin, moreover called for a reduction … Read More →
Complaints to the Swedish Consumer Agency about alcohol advertising have gone up by 800% after sobriety organization IOGT-NTO introduced their Alcohol Bothers campaign last summer. This explosive growth, compared to the same period last year, can be ascribed to an online service making it very easy for people to report their complaint through social media.
“When we spoke to the Swedish Consumer Agency last year they told us they weren’t very busy with alcohol adverts, because they did not have the resources and because people did not file many complaints. They received approximately 60 per year,” explains IOGT-NTOs European officer Irma Kilim. “We at IOGT-NTO were certain that people were bothered by alcohol advertisements but that they did not always know that what they saw is illegal or even where to report it.”
This motivated the organization formerly known as the International Organisation of Good Templars to create a tool for people to easily report alcohol advertisements and to show the prevalence of alcohol advertisements.
The tool works very easy through social media. Anytime an Instagram or Twitter message contains the hashtag #alkoholstör it is automatically entered into IOGT-NTOs database. The organization filters the incoming ads and publishes the relevant ones on the alcohol bothers website. Kilim ads that:”We also trained four ambassadors who looked through all the pictures and reported them to the Swedish office of consumers. If we compare the campaign period to the same period last year, we can see a raise in reports with 800%.”
The reporting tool however is only one tier of the Alcohol Bothers campaign. Before IOGT-NTO started reporting on alcohol advertisements, they gathered the email addresses of all candidates for the Swedish elections. Through the Alcohol Bothers website, people can contact any of the candidates to ask them, ”Do you think that the Swedish legislation for alcohol advertising should be more restrictive?” ”We knew that the Swedish people had a strong opinion in this but we wanted to show that there is a great political will as well”, Kilim explains. In this the campaign has already succeeded, with over 70% of the political response being in favor of further restrictions.
The Alcohol Bothers website includes a bit of information on every candidate and the possibility to directly ask them the above mentioned question. Additionally, anyone interested could go to the website, find the candidate they are interested in and click on their name. This will present them with a pre-written post card asking you only to fill in your contact information and hit “send”.
“Our goal was that every candidate should be asked at least once, that half of the candidates answered our question and that the majority of those who answered would say ‘Yes’. We reached all these goals, and got more candidates to answer than the biggest political surveys in Sweden,” Irma Kilim told EUCAM. ”It’s a big success!”
Besides these local and national Swedish parts of the campaign, IOGT-NTO is also planning a global Alcohol Bother campaign.
In England, the Labour party’s plans to introduce a ban on alcohol sponsorship of sporting events, combined with a series of measures to boost Britain’s health have been watered down at the last minute following ‘internal disagreement’ on how far reaching such measures should be. Labour’s health ambitions were presented last week as a future … Read More →
Author: Olivia Belt, Korene Stamatakos, Amanda J. Ayers1 Victoria A. Fryer, David H. Jernigan and Michael Siegel Title: Vested interests in addiction research and policy. Alcohol brand sponsorship of events, organizations and causes in the United States, 2010–2013 Journal: Addiction, 109: 1977–1985. doi: 10.1111/add.12727 Abstract Background and Aims: There has been insufficient research attention to the alcohol industry’s … Read More →