Cancer Councel Australia, 25 October 2023
Cancer Council is calling on the Federal Government to step away from industry codes and set higher standards for alcohol marketing, as new research shows zero alcohol product marketing is falling through the cracks of already-weak industry codes.
Our research was published in Drug and Alcohol Review in collaboration with Dr Lyndal Wellard-Cole from Cancer Council NSW and Professor Simone Pettigrew from The George Institute for Global Health. It highlighted that the current weak systems for managing alcohol marketing do not adequately consider zero alcohol products and that close attention must be paid to how zero alcohol products may provide additional marketing opportunities for the alcohol industry.
Julia Stafford, Chair of Cancer Council’s National Alcohol Working Group, warns that many zero alcohol products resemble alcohol products in all ways except for their alcohol content, including sharing a known alcohol brand identity. This brand sharing enables alcohol brands to be marketed in places and times where alcoholic products are not.