Regulate Alcohol Consumption Analysis

The Commission on Social Determinants of Health, which was a report made by the World Health Organisation, stated that there was a significant contribution of alcohol to disease, injury and death worldwide. On top of the health burden that alcohol creates there is social burden; alcohol has negative effects on the workplace, on family and on crime. Understandably, it is in the interest of the government to attempt to restrict these negative impacts by decreasing consumption of alcohol. Alcohol is a unique drug in the sense that it is not only legal, but it is allowed to be widely advertised on different platforms. One way governments can attempt to regulate alcohol consumption is via regulation of advertising much like the tobacco industry.

More than 30 diseases have a direct link to alcohol in their name in the International Classification of Diseases. These negative impacts on health can be very costly for countries, for example, it is estimated that alcohol costs the UK £21 billion annually. Although consuming alcohol has many negative impacts to someone’s health, often the most felt impact is the social burden of alcohol. Alcohol has a detrimental effect on the work place; people who drink on a consistent basis will not be able to reach their optimal level of productivity. Alcohol consumption is also heavily linked with crime; in the UK over half of violent incidents (53%) happen under the influence of alcohol. Moreover, there have been over 25,000 deaths due to drink driving in the UK since 1980. Drink driving not only delivers cost to the welfare system but also the cost of policing drink driving is expensive with the man power and equipment required. Alcohol does not only effect the drinker but also those around the drinker such as family and friends. This is the primary reason why countries need to be active in limiting the amount of alcohol consumption because the consumption of alcohol does not only effect the person who drinks it but also the people who know the drinker. Policies should be put in place in order to minimise the negative impact of

Although there are regulations to alcoholic drinks being advertised there are nowhere near the same limitations that have been put on the advertisement of cigarettes. General advertising was banned in 2003 and all sponsorship was stopped by 2005. Moreover, in 2016 cigarette companies were no longer allowed their own design on packs; every packet was forced to have ‘plain packaging’ with large health warnings on them. Although there are around double the amount of alcohol related hospital admissions compared to cigarette related there is still widespread advertisement of alcohol, they are still allowed to advertise on prime time TV and sponsor major events. One of the main criticisms of the lack of regulation of alcohol advertisement is the fact that a lot of adverts are exposed to people under the age of 18. Although it is illegal for companies to directly advertise to minors, there is very little that can be done to protect youths from alcohol advertising. Sponsorship of major sporting events and drinking’s prominence in the film industry means that alcohol has connotations of social success. A limitation on advertising would be one way in which to decrease consumption of alcohol. There was definitely some successes with the banning of advertisement of cigarettes; in 2015, of adults who had previously smoked, 56% had quit – the