Big Alcohol’s Parallel Universe
The most effective, evidence-based tool for preventing and reducing alcohol harm is the implementation of public health-oriented alcohol excise taxes. Decades of independent, peer-reviewed research consistently show that when alcohol prices increase, population-level alcohol consumption decreases, leading to a direct reduction in diseases, injuries, and deaths due to alcohol.
The World Health Organization identifies alcohol taxation as a Best Buy intervention – a highly cost-effective policy that both improves public health and generates vital domestic revenue for governments.
However, the efficacy of this policy depends on its integrity. To protect their profits, the alcohol industry has developed a sophisticated infrastructure designed to challenge these scientific facts by creating a “parallel universe” of evidence centred on the threat of illicit trade.
A Decade of Industry-Commissioned ‘Research’
For more than a decade, the alcohol industry has relied on Euromonitor International to construct and circulate a narrative about illicit alcohol: that illicit markets are vast, expanding, and highly sensitive to any increase in alcohol taxes. This storyline has appeared consistently across regions and years. It resurfaces in every debate about alcohol taxation, and it is presented as authoritative global evidence even though it is based on alcohol industry-commissioned consultancy work.
Euromonitor International is a market research company which provides analysis at a global and country level on services and products, including alcohol and tobacco. It produces reports and data on market size, company and brand market share and industry trends.
Euromonitor’s illicit-alcohol research has been paid for by the world’s largest alcohol producer. It is not independent analysis. It is consultancy work developed to support the interests of the alcohol industry.”
Pierre Andersson
Tobacco Tactics revealed Euromonitor had received funding from two Philip Morris International (PMI)-funded organisations: PMI IMPACT and the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW). According to the PMI IMPACT website, Euromonitor was contracted to “develop cross-sectoral policies to counter illicit trade”.
A key Euromonitor publication reveals this kind of relationship clearly also concerning Big Alcohol. In Size and Shape of the Global Illicit Alcohol Market (2018), Euromonitor writes: “In the past seven years, SAB Miller and AB InBev have commissioned Euromonitor International to conduct research on illicit alcohol markets worldwide.”
This confirms that Euromonitor’s illicit-alcohol research has been paid for by the world’s largest alcohol producer. It is not independent analysis. It is consultancy work developed to support the interests of the alcohol industry.
Across those seven years, Euromonitor conducted illicit-alcohol studies in at least 24 countries across Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe.
These studies appear directly in the report’s own reference list, including country assessments in Malawi, Mexico, Chile, Paraguay, Russia, the Dominican Republic, and others. These individual country studies form the data reservoir from which the global alcohol industry extracts numbers, key claims, and alarmist narratives.
These Euromonitor findings are then repackaged and amplified across the global alcohol-industry ecosystem.
- For example, the Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade: TRACIT built its Illicit Alcohol: A Global Study entirely on Euromonitor’s commissioned data, turning country-level estimates into a global narrative of crisis.
- Another example is the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking: IARD reproduced the same dataset in its brochure Alcohol in the Shadow Economy, presenting industry-funded numbers as if they were independent global evidence. Front groups such as the World Spirits Alliance and spiritsEUROPE embed these figures in lobbying toolkits and policy submissions, pushing dramatic claims into debates on taxation and availability.
Through coordinated circulation across these networks, alcohol industry numbers gain authority and visibility, appearing in media coverage, stakeholder consultations and policy hearings as though they were neutral facts rather than lobbying tools.
The pattern continues at the national level. In South Africa, Kenya, Mexico, Uganda, Brazil, and Thailand, alcohol industry front groups cite Euromonitor-derived numbers in press releases, parliamentary submissions, and media interviews. Local news outlets then repeat these claims uncritically, reinforcing the sense of an escalating “illicit alcohol crisis.”
Absence of Methodological Transparency
A defining feature of Euromonitor’s work illicit alcohol is the absence of methodological transparency. The reports contain extensive numerical detail – market shares, consumption levels, fiscal losses, product categories – but no information about how these numbers were derived. No data sources are disclosed. No sampling or modelling methods are explained. Nothing can be checked, reproduced, or scrutinised. Their “precision” is presented without the evidence base needed to validate it.
Despite this opacity, the reports make confident and unambiguous policy recommendations. Euromonitor repeatedly claims that high excise taxes and “excessive restrictions” drive illicit markets and urges governments to “avoid overregulating licit alcohol.” These messages align closely with the lobbying positions of alcohol industry front groups such as IARD, spiritsEUROPE, the World Spirits Alliance, and TRACIT.
Independent evidence paints a very different picture. WHO’s analyses show that unrecorded alcohol is a diverse category and that well-designed alcohol taxation does not automatically expand illicit consumption. Peer-reviewed modelling demonstrates that higher alcohol taxes, combined with targeted enforcement, can reduce both recorded and unrecorded consumption. Evidence from the Baltic countries confirms that well-implemented alcohol tax increases reduced total alcohol consumption without increasing illicit trade.
The Tobacco Playbook: Same Company, Same Problems
Meanwhile, evidence from tobacco industry monitoring provides a clear warning. Independent research has shown that Euromonitor’s illicit trade estimates in the tobacco sector suffer from major inconsistencies and methodological weaknesses. Blecher demonstrates that widely circulated illicit trade figures are often based on opaque assumptions and cannot be independently verified. Laverty and colleagues find that cigarette prices are not associated with illicit trade in the EU – border proximity, not taxation, was the actual factor – revealing substantial unreliability in industry-aligned estimates.
Gilmore et al. further document how industry-funded estimates tend to overstate the scale of illicit markets in ways that benefit industry lobbying positions. Similar discrepancies have been documented in Ghana, where independent research found illicit-cigarette levels at 20% – far below Euromonitor’s estimate of 39%. Researchers concluded that Euromonitor’s figures were not supported by market observations or enforcement records, underscoring concerns about opaque methods and commercial bias.
A Tobacco Control commentary highlights the core problem: Euromonitor’s business model relies on commercial contracts with transnational tobacco companies, raising direct conflicts of interest and undermining any claim to neutrality in estimating illicit markets.
Euromonitor’s illicit alcohol figures cannot be treated as unbiased measurements of unrecorded markets but must be understood as part of a broader corporate strategy to shape public debate and delay more ambitious alcohol policies.”
Pierre Andersson
These findings are directly relevant for alcohol policy. The same commercial structure, the same client relationships, and the same lack of methodological transparency underpin Euromonitor’s illicit alcohol reporting. The pattern revealed in the tobacco sector – consultancy products aligned with industry interests but presented as independent evidence – is replicated almost identically in alcohol. For policymakers, the implication is clear: Euromonitor’s illicit alcohol figures cannot be treated as unbiased measurements of unrecorded markets but must be understood as part of a broader corporate strategy to pollute the public discourse and alcohol policy debates and delay and derail public health action on alcohol harm.
A Resurgent Tactic in 2025
In 2025, pro-health tax reforms moved up the political agenda in a growing number of countries. Governments faced rising pressure on health systems while national budgets struggled to keep pace. At the same time, external funding for health promotion has continued to decline, pushing governments to prioritise sustainable domestic financing. Together, these shifts have made alcohol taxation more widely recognised as a tool that can both relieve pressure on health systems and strengthen fiscal space.
In this context, alcohol industry actors have revived or re-launched illicit alcohol claims rooted in Euromonitor’s narrative template. Old numbers are being presented as if they were new. Press statements warn that alcohol tax increases would “fuel illegal markets.” Media stories cite Euromonitor-style estimates without disclosing that the original data were alcohol industry-funded and methodologically opaque. In several countries, the timing of these claims closely coincides with parliamentary hearings or alcohol tax-reform consultations.
The strategic purpose is clear: to create doubt, hesitation, and fear around raising alcohol taxes – and to slow or block public health progress.
Policymakers and journalists confronted with illicit alcohol claims should ask three questions:
- Who funded the research?
- Is the methodology disclosed?
- And can the findings be independently verified?
Until those questions can be answered, Euromonitor’s estimates should be treated as what they are – alcohol industry-commissioned products to protect the profit maximisation interest of the alcohol industry, not evidence for public health action on alcohol harm.
