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Alcohol industry: vector of poverty, disease, and social, environmental and economic harm

Alcohol industry: vector of poverty, disease, and social, environmental and economic harm

Alcohol is no ordinary product and Big Alcohol is no ordinary industry.

Similar to the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry is largely made up of a few gigantic, transnational corporations – mainly based in high-income countries. Alcohol producers of this magnitude pose the biggest challenge to governments’ right and duty to implement and enforce evidence-based alcohol policy measures to protect their populations from harm.

Big Alcohol’s enormous size and power allow for considerable resources to be devoted, directly or indirectly, to promoting its own private profit interests – that are fundamentally at odds with the public interest in evidence-based alcohol prevention and control to achieve and health and development for all.

The concentration of market power in the alcohol industry also means an acceleration of the industrial epidemic that is alcohol harm – clearly posing a threat to sustainable human development.

Big Alcohol: Harmful products and unethical business practices

The Alcohol industry – the producers, distributors, retailers and marketers of alcohol – is an unethical industry whose products, marketing and other business practices are fueling alcohol harm worldwide. In this way, Big Alcohol is a significant vector of underdevelopment.

The alcohol industry is obliged by law to maximize profits for its shareholders. Profit maximization means selling more alcohol to more people for a longer time of their lives. But alcohol is not an ordinary commodity.

Therefore, the business practices – including product development, pricing, marketing, corporate political interference, corporate social responsibility schemes, corporate hijacking of science and corporate public relations – of the alcohol industry are key in promotion, glamorization and expansion of alcohol use and related harms globally.

Big Alcohol’s deployment of aggressive marketing tactics and political lobbying are obscuring independent evidence about the real effects of alcohol use and are perpetuating myths about alcohol.The alcohol industry is a significant commercial determinant of health and sustainable development.

Worldwide problem: Big Alcohol interference in public policy making

The alcohol industry is increasingly challenging fundamental institutions, undermining their responsiveness to the public interest and eroding public trust in the functioning of institutions.

The global concentration of the alcohol industry into a small number of transnational alcohol corporations has powered the industry’s capacity to obstruct, derail and undermine alcohol policy at the national, regional, and local levels. This pursuit of their private interest comes at the cost of public health, well-being and development.

Alcohol industry interference in public policy-making is pervasive. Alcohol industry actors seek to influence policy in two principal ways:

  1. Framing policy debates in a cogent and internally consistent manner, which excludes from policy agendas issues that are contrary to commercial interests;
  2. Adopting short- and long-term approaches to managing threats to commercial interests within the policy arena by building relationships with key actors using a variety of different organizational forms.

Corporate capture of public policy-making processes and involved institutions to prevent and reduce alcohol harm is a reality in countries around the world.

  • Documented cases from around the world show how the alcohol industry interferes with public policy-making processes to derail, obstruct, and undermine the formulation and implementation of evidence-based and WHO-re-commended alcohol policy best buy measures – often in clear opposition to public opinion.

Big Alcohol & SDGs: Conflict of interest

The producers of alcohol and other unhealthy commodities are commercial determinants of ill-health, economic harm and underdevelopment.

  • A growing proportion of the global burden of disease can be attributed to the commercialization of harmful products like alcohol that are driven by industry giants.

To effectively curb the commercial drivers of this obstacle to development, alcohol availability, affordability, and marketing (three Best Buys) need to be regulated.

But these public policy goals are a direct threat to the core business interest of Big Alcohol: to maximize profits by increasing alcohol consumption everywhere.

Big Alcohol relies on heavy and excessive alcohol use for its profits.

  • UK: Alcohol sales would decrease by 38%, a value of £13 billion, if consumers would NOT use alcohol in excess of recommendations from the UK’s National Health Service.

Big Alcohol: Corruption and bribery as business practices

The alcohol industry, especially the biggest multi-national corporations of the beer and liquor industries, have a long and appalling track record of using unethical business practices to pursue profits. Cases of corruption and bribery are well documented and seem to be systemic.

Heineken appears to have had an active hand in creating a culture of fraud and corruption […], writes Olivier van Beemen in “Heineken in Africa”.

The book “Heineken in Africa” provides a systematic and thorough investigation into the business dealings of a multinational beer giant in Africa. The book details cases of bribery and corruption in countries across the continent, such as Nigeria, Congo and Burundi.

Big Alcohol: No partner for sustainable development

The alcohol industry has often gone and keeps going to extraordinary lengths to undermine and influence public policy in ways that are unethical.

Harmful business practices are taken out of the playbook of Big Tobacco:

  • Tax schemes by multinational alcohol corporations are exploiting countries, especially in the global south.
  • Aggressive lobbying seeks to block the implementation of evidence-based measures to regulate alcohol in the public interest.
  • Marketing often targets children and youth and often depicts women in de-humanized, sexualized ways – perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes and norms.
  • Self-regulatory schemes are systematically violated by the alcohol industry.

The alcohol industry fuels the climate crisis, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and water and food insecurity.

The alcohol industry erodes economic productivity, sustainability and threatens considerable parts of countries’ GDPs.

And the alcohol industry is fueling massive inequalities within and among countries and societies, including disproportionate alcohol harm for children and youth, women and people of lower socio-economic status.