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‘ It feels like there ’ s an awful lot of uncertainty around alcohol policy .’
IAN WYBRON , DEMOS
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‘ Our members have a huge responsibility when it comes to things like ... under-age sales .’
JULIE BYERS , ASSOCIATION OF CONVENIENCE STORES
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‘ We can build more trust between the public and private sectors , the industry and the public health community .’
HENRY ASHWORTH , PORTMAN GROUP
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‘ When people think of the drinks industry they tend to think of huge multinationals , but 90 per cent of it is small and medium sized enterprises .’
KATE NICHOLLS , ASSOCIATION OF LICENSED
MULTIPLE RETAILERS
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‘[ France has ] very , very tight regulation , but under-age drinking is actually on the increase .’
MARK BAIRD , DIAGEO GB
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‘ We do need to recognise success as well ,’ she said , ‘ which means we need a clear benchmark of where we start from to work together ’. Her members were frustrated , however , that ‘ the goalposts seem to keep moving ,’ she stated . ‘ You need to give the trade the credit where it ’ s deserved , and you also need to make sure there ’ s joined-up thinking across government . In our own dealings with government we ’ ll say “ people are drinking less ” and they ’ ll say “ ah yes , but now they ’ re drinking all those nasty soft drinks that are full of sugar instead ”.’
‘ It ’ s worth saying that , in any social policy area , to have these sorts of trends in things like reductions in binge drinking is very significant ,’ said Portman Group chief executive Henry Ashworth . ‘ But we really need to make the effort together to tackle things like the rise in alcohol-related hospital admissions .’ One of the main tasks was to see how local challenges related to the bigger picture , he said – for example binge drinking rates in Newcastle or alcohol-related hospital admissions in Blackpool , both of which were way above national averages .
The ‘ negative ’ attitudes towards the alcohol responsibility deal had also not been helpful , he argued . ‘ The drinks industry committed to , and delivered , 80 per cent of alcohol products on the shelves carrying unit and health information and pregnancy warnings – voluntarily .’ Things were now ‘ in a different place ’ when it came to labelling , however , as , ‘ having achieved that 80 per cent figure , the CMO ’ s guidelines have changed ’.
There was a ‘ plethora of fantastic ’ local alcohol partnerships and schemes that were addressing the challenges in a coordinated way , he said . ‘ We need to continue to robustly
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Binge drinking across the UK is in decline and has been for ten years , particularly among 16 to 24-year-olds . |
evaluate these partnerships to understand what ’ s working well . That way we can build more trust between the public and private sectors , the industry and the public health community , and identify and overcome the barriers to effective partnership working .’
When it came to a policy area that was nearly as controversial as the responsibility deal – advertising regulation – the last three years had seen a ‘ sharp decline ’ in the number of complaints about alcohol adverts , said regulatory policy manager at the Advertising Standards Authority ( ASA ), Malcolm Phillips . There had also been a smaller decline in the number of alcohol cases his organisation – which enforces the UK ’ s advertising codes – had decided to formally investigate , he explained . However , the authority knew it could not ‘ rely on complaints alone to tell us what we need to know ’, and was committed to maintaining a proactive approach towards the issue . ‘ A claim often made by critics of
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advertising self-regulation is that the codes have no teeth , and there ’ s no incentives for companies to not bend the rules ,’ said Diageo GB ’ s head of alcohol in society , Mark Baird . ‘ This is not true .
‘ If you spend hundreds of thousands of pounds making an advert and buying advertising slots only to find out you can ’ t use it – that has an impact , believe me .’ Advertising self-regulation served to complement national laws , he said , and ‘ always went beyond ’ the legal requirements .
‘ Alcohol advertising comes under regular government scrutiny , but it ’ s very difficult to isolate a single factor – advertising – from all the other factors that influence alcohol con - sumption ,’ he argued . Denmark , for example , had liberalised advertising regulations and seen consumption decline , he said , while the introduction of the Loi Évin – designed to restrict children ’ s exposure to alcohol marketing – in France in the early ’ 90s had had limited impact on consumption levels . ‘ It ’ s very , very tight regulation , but under-age drinking is actually on the increase in France , at the same time as it ’ s declining here .’
In a ‘ mature market ’, advertising did not increase overall demand , he maintained . ‘ So that brings us to the question people always come back with – “ If you say alcohol advertis ing doesn ’ t work , why do companies spend so much money on it ?” Well , of course it works , it just doesn ’ t work in the way critics and commentators say it does – does Andrex think it can grow the market for toilet paper ? The purpose of advertising is to raise aware ness of your product , and to steal market share from your competitors . We want people to buy our product , rather than someone else ’ s .’
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November 2016 | drinkanddrugsnews | 11 |