Alcohol industry's attempts to take control over alcohol policy formulation in Sub-Saharan countries
Source: Forut
A recent comparison of proposed national alcohol policies in Lesotho, Malawi, Uganda, and Botswana shows that the alcohol industry has assumed a significant and detrimental role in designing national alcohol policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The policy drafts point to the alcohol industry’s preferred version of a national alcohol policy, which includes letting the industry regulate its own marketing activities.
In the study published in the January issue of the "Addiction" journal, authors Øystein Bakke and Dag Endal found that alcohol policy documents from the four African countries were almost identical, and were most likely based on a single source document that reflects alcohol industry interests. That source document originates from a series of alcohol policy initiatives in Sub-Saharan countries sponsored by multinational brewer SABMiller and the International Center on Alcohol Policies (ICAP), an alcohol industry-funded organisation.
The authors observed that the timing of the policy initiative suggests that it was spurred by the 2005 WHO alcohol initiative, and may represent an attempt to establish policies in Africa before WHO recommendations have a chance to influence their content.
Authors Bakke and Endal state: “Few, if any, would accept Philip Morris as the designer of the tobacco policy for a national government. The alcohol industry’s current policy proposals in several Southern African states can hardly be viewed any differently.”
Read more at the ADD web site.
The abstract and the full text of the article (html or pdf) may be read in the Addiction web site:
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Oslo, 15.12.2009
FORUT – Campaign for Development and Solidarity
