Alcohol companies and their lobby groups are systematically working to undermine and water down global alcohol policies that would reduce the harms associated with their products, according to new report.

In a new policy brief, the World Heart Federation (WHF) is challenging the widespread notion that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol can decrease the risk of heart disease, and calling for urgent and decisive action to tackle the unprecedented rise in alcohol-related death and disability worldwide.

11 years after the first edition European Centre for Monitoring Alcohol Marketing (EUCAM) has published a revised edition of its analysis of the key mesages of the alcohol industry.  

Alcohol consumption is a key structural driver of gender-based violence (GBV) and especially intimate partner violence (IPV). A new report from four countries in sub-Sahara Africa explores how the availability of alcohol – both alcohol outlet density and trading times – are associated with increased alcohol use, and increased risk for GBV perpetration and vicitimisation.

The number of road traffic accidents has decreased in high-income countries the last ten years. The opposite is the trend for low- and middle-income countries. This report shows that there is a very clear connection between alcohol use and road traffic accidents in Malawi.

The report launched in April 2021 takes a closer look at what has happened in the form of national follow-up of the UNGASS Outcome Document in 15 selected countries. It also contains the recomenndations from Drug Policy Futures to the UN Member States.

OECD recently released the report “Preventing harmful alcohol use”. It highlights that if governments invest in policies to reduce harmful alcohol consumption, they could save millions of lives. The economic benefits of putting them in place would also be much higher than the costs.

A new report ‘Alcohol and the coronavirus pandemic: individual, societal and policy perspectives’ by a group of researchers was released recently. They investigate the links between alcohol use and COVID-19, both for individuals and society – from physiological effects on the immune system to alcohol venues’ role in ‘super-spreader’ events.