New legislation backdrop for alcohol conference

The conference came at a crucial juncture for Sri Lanka. 1st of December, five days prior to the FORUT conference, the government implemented the new legislation: “The National Tobacco and Alcohol Authority Act”. Said FORUT Resident Representative, Terje Heggernes, at the opening of the conference: I want to congratulate the government in taking this bold step to prevent harm from alcohol use in the country. In doing so Sri Lanka is also leading the way internationally by setting evidence based polices into action.

No Ordinary Commodity

The name of the conference, ”Alcohol: No ordinary commodity” was borrowed from the book which was published by WHO, and written by Professor Thomas Babor and his fellow scientist. Mr. Heggernes also commented on this, noting that: “This book sums up in an excellent way the current knowledge about harm from alcohol worldwide and what we know about how it can be prevented” .

Professor Babor was the key note speaker in the conference informing the 130 participants from international and local NGOs as well as ministry departments about the evidence on effective alcohol policies. Professor Babor also spoke on the specific issue of alcohol and development. In his introduction Mr. Babor discussed the positive and negative consequences of alcohol use for society and concluded that “the benefits connected with the production, sale, and use of this commodity come at an enormous cost to society”. He pointed to the fact that alcohol by WHO is rated as one of the most serious threats to public health on a global scale, on par with tobacco use. Even more so in “developing countries with low mortality”, where alcohol use is rated as the most important contributor to the total burden of disease.

Evidence based policies

The main challenge now, professor Babor said, is how government agencies and NGOs can make use of the broad evidence base to translate research into effective alcohol policy. - An evidence based alcohol policy is needed to serve the public health interests of the many rather than the economic interests of the few, was his conclusion. On this background he congratulated the government and people of Sri Lanka with the new Tobacco and Alcohol Act.

The Chief Guest at the conference was Hon. Sarath N. Silva, the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka (photo). He was instrumental in the process leading up to the new Alcohol Act, since the tobacco and alcohol industry appealed to the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka to declare the draft Act as unconstitutional. When this battle was lost the industry managed to change the draft text so that most of the beer brands would not be affected by the new regulations. This move was however discovered and reversed, so that the new Act now is in line with international standards.

The Chief Justice had discussed the new Alcohol Act with the Minister of Health, he said, and they were both personally committed to the effective implementation of the regulations, eg. the total ban on advertising and sponsorship and the age limit of 21 years for buying alcohol. Complementary to the follow-up of the new law from the government’s side, he invited NGOs and the scientific community to involve in raising public support in favour of the law.

Local perspectives

Other speakers in the conference were Professor Lalith Rajapaksa and Professor Samarasinghe, both from the University of Colombo. They shared some of their knowledge in a session on “Alcohol control through community action”. FORUT’s alcohol and drug adviser, Pamodinee Wijayanayake together with the director of ADIC, Pubudu Sumanasekera gave their perspectives from implementing alcohol prevention activities in the actual development work on the ground.

The conference attracted broad attention from national newspapers and TV channels, and one of the biggest newspapers, Daily Mail, granted five quarter page advertisements to FORUT to promote the slogan “Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity”.