Alcohol Issues March 28 – April 01, 2022
This week’s Alcohol Issues highlights
- Beer Sales Continue to Decline in Germany.
- All Amounts of Alcohol Increase Cardiovascular Risk.
- New Report Reveals How Big Alcohol Exploits No-Alcohol Products.
This week’s most popular stories
- U.S. President Biden Includes Billions for Mental Health and Addiction in New Spending Package.
- Alcohol Use Increased in Some Groups in Spain During Pandemic.
- Alcohol Advertisements Associated With Intention to Use Alcohol Among Ugandan Youth.
Most Popular on the News Center
Special Feature – No. 11
Big Alcohol Exploits Popular Culture to Target Asian Youth
Big Alcohol knows young people are losing interest in alcohol. But Big Alcohol’s profit margins depend on hooking young people to their products early, to groom lifelong heavy alcohol consumers. So they have begun to zero in on a group that had so far been ignored by Big Alcohol: young Asians.
The most recent Big Alcohol push is the “I Rise, We Rise” campaign by Chivas Regal partnering with popular K-pop star Lisa.
In her opinion piece, Tharaka delves into the campaign breaking down what Chivas and Pernod Ricard are trying to accomplish with this marketing ploy and how it affects young people and women. She exposes the hypocrisy and unethical nature of this campaign which pursues profits in the pretense of promoting success, hard work, and other positive values.
Tharaka also reveals the larger context of Big Alcohol’s aggressive targeting of young Asians.
The article exposes how Big Alcohol marketing campaigns thwart the true spirit, success, health and rights of young people in the greedy pursuit of mega-profits.
Young people, specifically in the western world, are staying alcohol-free longer, become more sober curious, health and sustainability conscious, and are thus increasingly ditching the booze. This is good news for the youth’s health and well-being and thus, the world’s future. But Big Alcohol is frightened, because it means loss of profits. That is why Big Alcohol is now going after young people in Asia.
This Special Feature reveals Big Alcohol’s strategy of exploiting popular culture to target young Asians.
The Alcohol Issues Podcast
S2 E6: How Big Alcohol Derails Alcohol Prevention Efforts in the Netherlands
This episode is a brand new and real time case study of how the alcohol industry hijacks and derails alcohol prevention efforts.
People and communities in the Netherlands are burdened by heavy alcohol harm. And in 2018 the government made a commitment to better prevent and reduce that harm.
Unfortunately, though, this is all unravelling now.
To understand the alcohol policy debate in the Netherlands, host Maik Dünnbier talks with Wim van Dalen of STAP. Wim tells the story of an alcohol prevention effort that got totally hijacked and derailed by the alcohol industry.
It started with ambitious targets to better protect people from alcohol harm but now the country faces the real possibility that alcohol will become even more easily and widely available.
The conversation between Maik and Wim is very timely because there are important alcohol policy development processes going on at national, European, and global levels where the alcohol industry is also interfering and trying to get a seat at the table.
But the case of the alcohol roundtables in the Netherlands illustrates clearly what the pitfalls are.
Wim van Dalen is one of the most renowned and accomplished public health alcohol policy champions in the Netherlands and Europe. In the conversation, he will touch upon some of the policy improvements he was part of bringing about in the Netherlands over the years.
