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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 |