The nanny private sector
alcohol
UPDATE: Olympic beer promotion deal includes all AB InBev brands
A heavily-criticised deal to promote beer brands at the next two Olympics covers all brands in AB InBev’s portfolio, Alcohol Review has learned.
The deal shows a “disgraceful disregard for the health and wellbeing of the millions of children” said the UK Association of Directors of Public Health on Monday, with Scottish health NGO SHAAP saying it is “very disappointing”,
The agreement between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and AB InBev will cover “all the brands within AB InBev’s portfolio”, a spokesperson told Alcohol Review today, adding that there will be “a global focus on non-alcoholic beer products”.
The deal includes “increased prominence and availability of these products for fans and athletes across the world to celebrate and encourage responsible drinking”, the IOC said. It said the partnership will be “led globally” by AB InBev’s new no-alcohol brand Corona Cero. Olympic sponsors’ brands are not seen on the field of play as they would be in football.
“The proposed marketing activities are focussed on an adult audience only with a strong responsible drinking message as a key component. We are confident that this partnership will meet all appropriate industry standards in relation to its positioning and messaging,” said a British Olympic Association spokesperson.
Critics say the purpose of promoting a zero alcohol brand like this one is to simultaneously promote a near-identical alcoholic brand, hoping to sides-step advertising restrictions like those in France, which hosts the games this year.
The IOC’s statement on Friday said AB InBev’s 3.5% Michelob Ultra brand will take the lead at the Los Angeles games in 2028. One of its selling points is being relatively low in calories. The Olympics have featured some alcohol sponsorship before but this is the first time an alcohol company has been a worldwide partner. ■
Brits want alcohol-industry-protected policy
Seven in ten Brits want government policy to be protected from alcohol industry interference and a majority want a ban on alcohol advertising, says a survey for the Alcohol Health Alliance (which launches its manifesto in Parliament today.
“With a general election due to take place next year, our message to all political parties is that with the right political will there is a significant opportunity here to turn the tide on alcohol harm and drastically improve the lives of generations to come,” said Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chair of the alliance.
The findings accompany the launch of a report and manifesto today in Parliament. The alliance points to National Audit Office figures showing alcohol deaths directly attributable to alcohol rose by 89% between 2001 and 2021, while alcohol harms cost the NHS £3.5bn a year.
The Yougov survey also found that 60% of people think alcohol displays and promotions in shops should only be visible to people who intend to browse or buy alcohol. They also showed strong support for making it mandatory to put basic information on alcohol product labels.
76% of respondents said the alcohol content of alcohol products should be required on labels, not just the alcohol percentage as is the case now, forcing consumers to work out how much alcohol a drink contains. Over half supported mandatory pregnancy warnings and nutritional information.
Alcohol products are exempt from laws requiring all other types of food and drink to include nutritional information on labels, despite alcohol being linked to seven types of cancer and over 200 other illnesses. The only requirement is for alcohol product labels to include volume, alcohol percentage and common allergens.
The UK government promised a consultation on alcohol labelling in 2020, but it did not deliver on its promise. ■
Twittersphere:
Why are we paying so much for alcohol-free drinks that aren’t taxed?
by Cameron Shackell, Queensland University of Technology
Dry July, an Australian fundraising campaign to support people affected by cancer, is almost here again. The premise is that abstaining from booze and hangovers for a month frees up money to donate.
But with prices in the booming alcohol-free drinks category often rivalling those of regular tipples, participants this year might find they have less spare cash than they anticipate.
Traditional alcohol producers, who have expanded into the US$11 billion non-alcoholic drinks industry, have helped make the high prices charged seem acceptable to consumers by using a marketing tactic called price-anchoring.
Lured into paying more
When we encounter a new product, we latch onto whatever seems relevant in the immediate environment to estimate its value. Sellers often exploit this by staging information at purchase points. The classic is a price tag with $99 struck out and $79 written in. Whether it’s accurate or not, the $99 reference point shapes our perception of value and price.
This so-called “price anchoring”, is just one example of the broader anchoring cognitive bias described by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.
The essence of anchoring is that we tend to rely too heavily on an initial piece of information (the “anchor”) when making decisions. This can lead to skewed judgements and poor decisions in everything from deciding whether to have surgery to buying real estate.
Anchoring has been used to reinvent and elevate the virgin drinks category by exploiting the fact we are used to paying high prices for alcohol in bottles, cans or glasses of a certain size, shape and sophistication. When alcohol-free versions with similar labels appear beside them on the shelf, website or menu, we tacitly accept they should command roughly the same prices.
It’s not just that the next bottle along provides a suggestive price. Our brains, steeped in marketing, know that alcohol prices can range far upwards from “normal”, making them not just comparison points but the proverbial $99 scratched out. So even if we spend a lot on non-alcoholic wine, we feel like we have scored compared with what we might have dropped on a bottle of Grange.
Where we are most susceptible
The effect is strongest in bottle shops and bars, where the glitz of alcohol marketing, social pressure and the sheer number of expensive items overwhelms our rational thinking. But it also works on websites of the national liquor outlets where special zero-alcohol categories have been established beside the traditional beer, wine and spirits listings.
It doesn’t take much browsing to confirm that prices are similar. Currently, on one of the big retailers’ websites, a case of 330ml bottles of Heineken Lager (5% alcohol) is $55, Heineken 3 (3.3% alcohol) is $50, and Heineken Zero (less than 0.5% alcohol) is $49. Among the non-alcoholic spirits, 700ml of Lyre’s Dry London Spirit – “crafted to capture the essence of a classic gin” – is $51 at another outlet while the same size bottle of 37% alcohol Gordon’s London Dry Gin is $45. Gordon’s own non-alcoholic offering – Gordon’s 0.0 Alcohol Free – is listed at $38.
Price anchoring in the alcohol-free market comes with an extra twist of lemon.
Brands will encourage you to think their investment in developing “healthier options” using “high-quality ingredients” means high prices are fair enough, and that a non-alcoholic drink made with arcane “botanicals” and “adaptogens” in a nice bottle is worth a splurge.
But look at what makes up the price. All processed drinks incur a Goods and Services Tax (GST). And drinks that contain alcohol are hit with a heavy additional excise. The exact percentage is difficult to calculate, but the alcohol-related tax on a bottle of full-strength beer can exceed 30%.
Industry players don’t pay that tax on non-alcoholic drinks. So, in a sense, they are pocketing a hefty bonus that well-anchored customers forget is not being passed on to the government. Ouch.
Supermarkets and nurturing the next generation
Seemingly at odds with price anchoring is the appearance of non-alcoholic versions of some famous brands in supermarkets.
An incentive for names like Heineken, Coopers and Gordon’s to be in supermarkets is visibility in a family-friendly environment. Their brand becomes recognisable to customers who are underage now, but will soon be ready to buy alcohol for their 18th birthday bash.
It’s a risky strategy, however, and can attract adverse publicity
. In fact, to protect their reputations, several supermarket chains in New Zealand require customers to show ID when purchasing non-alcoholic lookalike drinks.
Is there a way to overcome the illusion?
The Australian government’s Behavioural Economics Team (BETA) has an informative blog post on minimising the impact of price anchors. But research suggests even experts are susceptible.
Besides awareness, you can reduce the effect by curating your exposure to price information. If you need non-alcoholic drinks for home or an event, visit the supermarket before the bottle shop. The range may not be as big, the drinks may not be any cheaper, and you may need to go to the bottle shop anyway. But the experience will put the untaxed non-alcoholic products in a fairer context – the soft drink aisle. Comparing prices under those sober lights, you might suddenly feel like picking up a bottle of ginger ale instead.
In bars and clubs, you can try to flip the script. Ask for your soda water in a fancy glass with lots of ice and slices of lemon or lime. This anchors what’s in your hand to high-priced cocktails.
Of course, if you embrace the life of a true ascetic, H₂O is a zero-dollar option that, as Nietzsche said always suffices. In Dry July, you might even join the hype and call it non-alcoholic vodka.
*Cameron Shackell is Visiting Fellow at Queensland University of Technology This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Australia’s system of taxing alcohol is ‘incoherent’, but our research suggests a single tax rate isn’t the answer
by Ou Yang, The University of Melbourne and Preety Pratima Srivastava, RMIT University
The best word to describe the way Australia taxes alcoholic drinks is “incoherent”.
It was the word used by the 2010 Henry Tax Review to describe a system in which some wine effectively faces no alcohol tax, expensive wine is taxed heavily and cask wine lightly, beer (but not wine) is taxed by alcohol content, brandy is taxed less than other spirits, and cider is taxed differently to beer.
Industry calculations suggest cask wine is taxed at as little as six cents per standard drink, mid-price wine at 26 cents, bottled beer at 56 cents, and spirits at $1.24.
The Henry Review recommended taxing all drinks containing more than a small amount of alcohol at the same rate per unit of alcohol, regardless of type. It was a recommendation backed by specialists in Australia’s tax system.
Implicit, and largely unexamined, in these recommendations is the assumption that alcohol does the same damage in whatever form it is taken.
Our new study, linking drinkers’ risky behaviours to the types of alcoholic beverages they mostly consume, finds this isn’t so.
Damage depends on the type of drink
Using data from six waves of an Australian recreational drug survey, we find that regular-strength beer and pre-mixed spirits in a can rank among the highest in their links to both drink-driving and hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviours.
Mid-range are mid-strength beer, cask wine, and bottled spirits and liqueurs.
At the bottom are low-strength beer and pre-mixed spirits in a bottle, which have the weakest links to risky and abusive behaviours when intoxicated.
Probability of drink driving, by age and beverage type
Source: Economic Record
Some of the relationships vary with the type of damage. While bottled wine is linked to a moderate to high probability of drink-driving, it is also linked to a low probability of hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviours.
Pre-mixed spirits in a bottle are related to a low probability of both drink driving and hazardous, disturbing and abusive behaviours. But when account is taken of the gender of the drinkers (so-called alcopops are typically drunk by females), we find them no longer as safe.
Probability of hazardous, disturbing or abusive behaviour
Source: Economic Record
Our study suggests that Australia’s haphazard system of taxing alcohol might have got some things right. Beer, which is typically taxed more highly than wine, seems to do more damage.
But it has got some things wrong. Cask wine appears to be significantly undertaxed relative to the damage it does.
More broadly, our findings suggest that if alcohol is to be taxed according to the damage it does, the tax system we adopt will need to be more complicated than a single rate for every unit of alcohol regardless of the form in which it comes. ■
Note: Ou Yang, Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne and Preety Pratima Srivastava, Senior Lecturer, RMIT University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Try out some alcohol policies at home
Policies and individual choices are normally seen as completely separate, but in reality they merge. So why not ring in the New Year by road-testing some effective alcohol strategies at home?
We all set some rules, or policies, for our homes, for example. Few let outdoor shoes go beyond a certain threshold. Weaponry, road vehicles, fire, smoke and harmful chemicals also typically have their perimeters.
These are not prohibitions. They are regulations. By crossing borders we can have access to all of the things verboten in some places. Out there is a target-shooting, tanker driver who only smokes when scrubbed up, unarmed on the veranda.
The regulatory systems of our private lives often operate on the basis of unwritten policies picked up from parents, partners, and common sense. They offer an easy way to keep a safe, livable and inexpensive environment.
These policies are typically adopted and applied without any democratic mandate. But we will also, sometimes, decide to set new policies, often through a process of thought, negotiation and compromise.
So why not consider adding evidence-based alcohol policies to the mix. We might take, for instance, government policies reckoned to curb harm at a population level as a starting point: increase the price, and reduce availability and marketing.
A few calculations might allow us to set a minimum unit price. This we might do by identifying products which are below it. Or we might levy a alcohol per unit “tax”, setting aside revenue for household running costs and infrastructure.
Implementation of these might be complicated. Perhaps an easier option would be reducing alcohol availability. We might bar keeping alcohol at home; Or to limit the stockpile; Or not put what we have in the fridge; Or, maybe, not to buy online.
Limiting home availability would have a knock-on effect. It bumps up the price of alcohol at home, imposing on inhabitants the cost of leaving the house to buy it. This also gives us a chance for second thoughts.
Reducing marketing exposure is trickier, because alcohol advertising targets us without our consent. But we can reduce it, by putting alcohol brands out of sight at home. We can also filter some online ads. And we can try to avoid alcohol retail.
Harmful levels of drinking are best addressed with the aid of medical advice. But making our own environments less alcohol loaded makes low-risk drinking the easy option. And home drinking is the source of the bulk of alcohol harm.
We all set and live by policies to create environments which are safe and best serve our needs. We need politicians to do this for us in environments we share. ■