Insights from the Public Launch of the Big Alcohol Exposed Report 2025: A Web of Interference

Insights from the Public Launch of the Big Alcohol Exposed Report 2025

On January 21, 2026, Movendi International convened policymakers, researchers, journalists, UN actors, and civil society leaders for the public launch of the Big Alcohol Exposed Report 2025. The virtual event “A Web of Interference: How Big Alcohol Undermined Health Policy and Polluted Public Discourse in 2025. Public Launch Webinar: Big Alcohol Exposed Report 2025” examined how alcohol industry interference intensified across regions as commercial pressure mounted and social norms shifted in the past year.

The event combined global monitoring data, peer-reviewed science, insights from a leading researcher, and first-hand advocacy experience to demonstrate why safeguarding policy space from alcohol industry interference is now a public health and democratic imperative.

Opening and Framing: Purpose of Big Alcohol Exposed

Kristina Šperková, International President of Movendi International, opened the event by underscoring the purpose of the Big Alcohol Exposed initiative: to systematically document alcohol industry practices and protect policymaking from vested commercial interests.

She emphasised that making alcohol industry interference visible and traceable is essential for safeguarding people’s health, democratic decision-making, and evidence-based health policy.

Following Kristina’s scene-setting remarks, the expert speakers and report author explored the broader context – mounting pressure on the alcohol industry and its implications for interference – and examined what this means for alcohol industry strategies in depth.

Protecting policy space from alcohol industry interference is essential for public health, democratic governance, and evidence-based alcohol policy.”

Kristina Šperková, International President, Movendi International

How Interference Operates in Practice

The Big Alcohol Exposed Report 2025 shows that alcohol industry interference is not abstract or episodic. It operates through concrete policy arenas, institutional arrangements, and political moments, adapting to local contexts while following a deliberate and recognisable global strategy.

The following insights from Europe and South Africa illustrate how Big Alcohol actors gain access, shape narratives, and delay evidence-based health policy by embedding themselves in decision-making processes and public debate.

Brussels and the European Policy Arena

Rebecka Öberg, European Policy Officer at Movendi Sweden, described how alcohol industry lobbyists in Brussels increasingly seek access to public health and policy-adjacent spaces.

She highlighted curated cultural and political events framed around wine as European heritage and identity, where regulation is portrayed as cultural hostility and public health advocacy is dismissed as ideological or extreme.

Rebecka linked these narratives to concrete policy processes, including the political context surrounding the EU wine package, where cultural framing helped create cover for regulatory exemptions and sector-support measures.

She also noted a clear rise in industry efforts to participate in civil society and research spaces – including requests from Big Alcohol actors and consultancies to join public health events – reflecting a strategic push to be recognised as legitimate policy stakeholders, despite their fundamental conflicts of interest.

We see a clear strategy to normalise alcohol industry presence in civil society and research spaces to gain legitimacy.”

Rebecka Öberg, European Policy Officer, Movendi Sweden

South Africa: Institutional Capture in Action

Susan Goldstein, Professor and member of the Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance, presented findings from a case study on alcohol industry involvement in South Africa’s stalled Draft Liquor Amendment Bill, based on freedom-of-information requests.

She showed how 14 alcohol industry organisations dominated statutory consultation processes at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC), occupying seats across five key committees, while public health and community voices were largely excluded. Even the Department of Health was marginalised, despite the bill’s explicit public health objectives.

When independent studies supported alcohol policy reform, alcohol industry actors commissioned counter-research, offered resources to government, threatened litigation, and ultimately promoted a self-regulatory “social compact” that helped freeze policy change.

Susan placed these findings in a stark context: around 172 alcohol-related deaths occur every day in South Africa, while only about 30% of the population consumes alcohol at all, meaning alcohol harm is rampant while alcohol consumption is not the norm but the whole of society pays for the harms and costs caused by alcohol.

In current alcohol tax debates, she noted that inflated illicit-trade narratives dominate media coverage, despite around 85% public support for higher alcohol taxes, particularly when revenues are earmarked for social priorities.

Illicit-trade narratives dominate the tax debate despite overwhelming public support for higher alcohol taxes.”

Susan Goldstein, Professor and member of the Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance

Learning From Tobacco: Academic Perspective on Industry Power

May van Schalkwyk, Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, situated alcohol industry interference within the longer history of tobacco industry tactics.

Drawing on her research and the wider evidence base, she explained how alcohol companies mislead about the origins and causes of alcohol harm, particularly through alcohol industry-funded science, front groups and youth “education” programmes.

These initiatives, she noted, push the flawed concept of “personal responsibility” and in doing so normalise alcohol use, present alcohol use as inevitable, obscure the role of marketing and availability in alcohol harm, and increase uncertainty about well-established risks such as cancer.

Strategic partnerships with trusted institutions further launder industry credibility and embed alcohol actors in policy-adjacent spaces.

In the closing discussion, May explained that alcohol industry practices must be treated as objects of public health surveillance, comparable to disease monitoring. Interference, misinformation, and marketing saturation are systemic exposures that shape environments, norms, and inequities. Without recognising and regulating these practices as drivers of harm, policy responses will continue to fall short.

Alcohol industry practices should be treated as objects of public health surveillance, just like disease or environmental exposures.”

May van Schalkwyk, Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh

Big Alcohol Exposed Report 2025: Key Findings

Pierre Andersson, Senior Alcohol Policy Advocacy Advisor at Movendi International and co-author of the report, presented the core findings of the report and explained its methodology. The analysis draws on continuous global monitoring of more than 1,300 documented cases of alcohol industry conduct during 2025, combined with a structured review of 77 independent peer-reviewed studies (2024–2025) analysed through the Dubious Five framework.

Pierre situated these findings within the context of an industry in systemic crisis. Alcohol use is declining across high-income markets, particularly among younger generations. Global wine consumption has fallen to its lowest level in more than six decades, investor confidence has declined, market valuations have dropped, and boardroom instability has increased. For an industry dependent on continuous growth, this pressure fuels increasingly aggressive interference strategies.

Against this backdrop, he outlined three dominant global patterns in 2025:

1. The illicit-alcohol smokescreen – coordinated use of unverified, often industry-commissioned figures to derail alcohol taxation and other population-level policies.
2. Infiltration of daily life through digital systems – embedding alcohol promotion into streaming platforms, social media, influencer economies, and ultra-fast delivery services, including high-profile brand integrations.
3. The responsibility illusion – shifting blame onto individuals through “moderation” narratives while opposing effective policy measures and obscuring commercial drivers of harm.

Pierre stressed that escalating interference signals vulnerability rather than strength, and that exposing these practices creates space for more ambitious, evidence-based alcohol policy.

Exposing these patterns opens space for more ambitious, evidence-based alcohol policy.”

Pierre Andersson, Senior Alcohol Policy Advocacy Advisor, Movendi International

What Actions the Report Findings Indicate Are Needed

The launch of the Big Alcohol Exposed Report 2025 made clear that documenting and exposing alcohol industry interference is important. But it is only the starting point. Across presentations and discussion, speakers converged on a set of action-oriented priorities that translate exposure into protection, and evidence into policy impact.

First, alcohol industry conduct need to be treated as a standing object of public health surveillance. Continuous monitoring of lobbying, marketing, narrative-shaping, pollution of the discourse, and policy interference is essential to make Big Alcohol strategies visible, comparable across countries, and accountable over time.

Second, policymakers need to actively protect policy spaces through robust conflict-of-interest safeguards. The evidence presented shows that voluntary transparency and “stakeholder engagement” frameworks leave decision-making vulnerable to capture. Clear rules are needed to limit alcohol industry access to policy formulation, advisory bodies, and health-related consultations.

Third, public health and civil society need to move upstream in shaping the policy debate. Rather than reacting to recurring industry narratives and claims – such as illicit alcohol, “culture”, or “personal responsibility” – advocates need to pre-empt these frames with value-based communication, conflict of interest exposure, social norming of public support, and the population-level benefits of evidence-based alcohol policy solutions.

Fourth, action is required in the information environment itself. As alcohol marketing becomes embedded in digital platforms, entertainment, and everyday services, public interest communication and regulation need to operate in the same spaces, particularly to reach young people and protect high-risk communities.

Finally, speakers underscored the importance of showing and building on public support to break political inertia. Strong backing for solutions such as alcohol taxation and protections against marketing already exists in many contexts. Making this support visible and centring lived experience strengthens the legitimacy of decisive policy action.

Together, these priorities point to a shift from isolated advocacy to coordinated, preventive action – matching the global scale, sophistication, and persistence of alcohol industry interference documented in 2025.

Moderator Synthesis and Closing Reflections

In her closing reflections, Kristina Šperková synthesised key insights from the discussion. She highlighted how the evidence presented throughout the event demonstrated that alcohol harm is driven by the products and practices of the alcohol industry that shape markets, norms, and policy space.

She underscored that industry interference operates far upstream of formal policy debates, through agenda-setting and narrative control, and reiterated that systematic monitoring and exposure of industry conduct is itself a public health intervention. She concluded by reaffirming Movendi International’s commitment to continued monitoring through Big Alcohol Exposed and to supporting evidence-based, people-centred alcohol policy despite coordinated corporate opposition.