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Health minister meets alcohol industry over alcohol-free drinks

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Health minister Jo Churchill chaired a meeting with alcohol industry representatives which began exploring how uptake of low-alcohol drinks might help prevent health problems on Monday.

Jo Churchill

“The roundtable was made up of representatives from the alcohol industry, trade bodies, consumer groups and retailers,” said the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

The health department said the meeting “kickstarted discussions” on proposals first outlined in the Prevention Green Paper of summer 2019.

The paper suggested increasing the availability of low-alcohol products by 2025 and reviewing evidence on raising the threshold for officially using the term “alcohol-free” to 0.5% from 0.05%.

Portman Group (PG), which represents large alcohol producers and retailers, said yesterday it “co-hosted” the meeting.

At the sam e time released a poll highlighting role its members could play in weaning their customers off alcohol, noting a quarter of alcohol drinkers are regular consumers of low-alcohol drinks.

“Work will continue on developing proposals including a further meeting with public health organisations,” said the DHSC.

Many in public health complain of a chronic lack of resources for treatment services, low alcohol prices and high levels availability and advertising. ■

UPDATED: UK lockdown alcohol volume estimates disagree

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A UK alcohol industry trade body says beer and wine sales measured in litres both fell in the covid-19 lockdown, apparently contradicting a health analyst’s findings.

Beer sales fell 10% by volume in the year to October 2020 and the volume of wine sold fell by 5% in the same period, says the Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA).

It gave no number for spirits, but in a later press release on low- and no-alcohol labelling it said “spirits sales are flat”.

“It combines sales across on-trade venues with off-trade sales from shops, supermarkets etc to produce an overall volume sales figure,” says Tom Pratt, the WSTA data manager.

An estimate by Sheffield University’s Colin Angus published last year showed an overall increase in alcohol consumption, based on official tax information. WSTA says its estimate is based on Nielsen and CGA data.

Neither estimate sheds light on which groups of people are drinking more alcohol and in what circumstances, which may be more useful in pinpointing harm than the average over the population. ◼

Investors favour alcohol

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Alcohol share prices in the US are far stronger than before the covid-19 slump struck with the US Alcoholic Beverages/Drinks Index up a fifth over the full year, having almost halved in February (see chart).

A share price rise needn’t necessarily indicate an expectation of higher profits or revenue. It could be a “flight to safety”, where people make more reliable bets in crises, which is why gold prices go up.

Interpreting share movements is a matter of speculation. This interpretation would indicate the US financial market expects alcohol to fair relatively well and is willing to bank on it. ■

The case for an alcohol advertising cap

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Limiting alcohol advertising spend could boost industry profits while testing the premise underlying our current approach.

Policy is often based on the assumption alcohol advertising is about battling for a share of a market of fixed size.

Cynics, of which I am one, doubt we are unmoved by the billions being spent on influencing our spending decisions.

Proving or disproving either case is nigh-on impossible, with the real world having too many complicating factors.

Accept the premise
With science offering no obvious way forward, the solution may lie taking the premise to its logical conclusion.

So, let’s say it is true, demand for alcohol is indeed immovable. It would mean nearly all advertising money was being wasted.

Most cash spent, say, promoting lager A over lager B, would be adding to the sector’s cost base for no extra income.

The route to higher shareholder returns can only lie in conducting this contest at lower cost.

Alcohol suppliers should, then, agree to cut their mostly fruitless marketing costs by agreeing a cap on advertising expenditure.

To maximise shareholder returns this cap would be best set as low as possible, allowing it to be returned as profit.

Guaranteed benefits 
There is no reason for shareholders to resist such a cap on wastage, unless the notion of having fixed market size is untrue.

A low adspend cap would also satisfy those doubting that it does not help boost overall alcohol consumption.

If the premise of current policy is right, alcohol sector’s profits will rise, if not, alcohol consumption will fall. 

Wherever the truth lies, someone would stand to benefit from putting this critical assumption to the test. ■

Covid-19 shows life-saving policies are popular

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The effort to control the covid-19 outbreak shows the public welcomes government action to protect life. Politicians might take note when formulating policies on alcohol, responsible for one in twenty deaths.

Billions of us have overnight willingly complied with often stringent laws curtailing our business and social lives, thanks to our clear understanding that doing so is saving millions of lives.

It seems reasonable to suggest that we would also gladly accept modest extra tax, advertising restrictions, and labelling and availability measures to cut millions of deaths, injury and suffering from alcohol consumption.

Far harsher restrictions are in place. Alcohol sales have been banned under lockdown laws in South Africa, Botswana, and parts of Thailand, Greenland and among a native group in Canada. The impact is uncertain.

Alcohol dependents will likely suffer the physical and mental health effects of withdrawal.Some have reportedly died as a result of “toddy” becoming hard to come by in India, largely by their own hand.

Providing support will be more challenging in coming months. Can Zoom support ever really replace a face-to-face meeting? Or might online even attract new people and offer more privacy?

Or will online help miss those who need it most? One former alcohol dependent said in a philcain.com discussion that being in covid-19 isolation with a stash of alcohol would have been her “happy place”.

Like it or not, we will find out some answers in the very near future. But our exceptional circumstances will also create exceptional statistics, full of “confounders”, making them incomparable with those before.

Road accidents in places where alcohol is suddenly off-limits, for example, are likely to drop sharply. But, then again, there is going to be hardly anyone on the road. So what will the numbers mean?

The first phase of the covid-19 outbreak has shown the public welcomes decisive government action to protect health and we will gladly accommodate them. 

As a species we are adaptable survivors. And we have now shown we welcome advice that helps us survive. We might also use this time to reflect and rethink our priorities and habits.

There is room for a glimmer of optimism we might make the best of this unusually bleak situation. ■

A coronavirus ethos can help with alcohol

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The challenge of changing our behaviour to slow the spread of coronavirus offers valuable clues about how we all might help reduce the harms of alcohol.

There are those aspects of coronavirus aware behaviour adults must master alone, like washing our hands or the remarkably challenging feat of not touching our faces.

But the most difficult ones for coronavirus are the social ones: turning down invitations, spurning warm hugs, gleeful handshakes, high-fives and knuckle-bumps.

Reducing alcohol use can be a personal struggle too, with the urge to use it to sooth ourselves or lift our mood often heightened by withdrawal symptoms. But the social aspects are even harder to halt.

We might need to pooh-pooh a pub visit, if the environment is hard for us. We might need to say no to a drink or, maybe, explain our choices to people doing exactly the opposite.

It is awkward and difficult, all of it, particularly to begin with, but it is possible. We may miss our old habits, but we can grow fond of alternatives which serve the same purpose.

We can see why invitations have to be declined. And we can learn to greet one with namaste, or foot-bump, bow or alcohol-free beer, or whatever other hygienic greeting we can devise.

In both cases we are adaptable creatures able to combine science, flexibility, imagination and empathy to reduce the harm we do ourselves and to others. ■