Drinks industry supplanting government role in alcohol policies in Sub-Saharan Africa

Who would accept Philip Morris as the designer of the tobacco policy for a national government? Should McDonald’s or CocaCola be in charge of developing national nutritional standards? Unthinkable! Should the alcohol industry’s current proposals for national alcohol policies in several Southern African states be viewed any differently?

In a number of Sub-Saharan countries the drinks industry has usurped a governmental role by designing national alcohol policies. Its motive is clearly to safeguard its own vested interests – by directing the development of alcohol policies! Such activities have resulted in industry-oriented draft national alcohol policies in some 5-10 countries. Drafts FORUT (Norwegian Campaign for Development and Solidarity) has reviewed advance the interest of SABMiller, Carlsberg and other multinational alcohol producers rather than effective strategies to protect public health.

FORUT suspects that these initiatives from the drinks industry in Southern Africa represent an attempt to pre-empt government action and specifically to head off the impact of a resolution on alcohol to be considered at the World Health Assembly this week. The International Centre for Alcohol Policies (ICAP) in Washington seems to be behind this regional effort in Southern Africa, backed by SABMiller, Carlsberg and other drinks companies.

The industry alcohol policy activities have occurred in Malawi, Uganda, Lesotho, Ghana, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Zambia, and possibly other countries.

The alcohol industry policy proposals are on the wrong track, according to FORUT:

• The policy drafts ignore the international evidence base on alcohol prevention developed by independent alcohol researchers working on behalf of the World Health Organization.
• Industry proposals fail to adopt a public health approach to alcohol problems. They rather narrowly blame the drinkers and prioritize interventions that affect individual problems drinkers.
• The text of the policies emphasizes the acceptability and the economic role of alcohol rather than public health and safety considerations.
• The policies promote ineffective self-regulation at the expense of government regulation of marketing and advertising of alcoholic beverages. Neither do they address numerous proven governmental policies to address public health harm from alcohol use.
• The proposed policies would inappropriately enshrine “active participation of all levels of the beverage alcohol industry as a key partner in the policy formulation and implementation process.”
• The ICAP proposals are not designed for the situation in the Sub-Saharan region and the individual countries; neither do they recognize the special needs of the developing world.
• The various draft policies are virtual carbon copies of each other.
• The industry documents propose laudable, but resource intensive, interventions related to education, information, treatment etc without taking into account the health, police and education costs of carrying out those interventions.
• Contrary to industry claims, the proposed policies are not the result of broad national consultative processes. They represent a “one size fits all” formula created by and for the alcoholic-beverage industry.

More information:

FORUT – Campaign for Development and Solidarity, Norway

Øystein Bakke (mobile) + 47 416 22 135, Dag Endal (mobile) +47 911 84 388

E-mail: dag.endal@forut.no or oystein.bakke@forut.no