Global alcohol policies needed to cut harm

Friday November 7th, 2008

Experts today call for international controls to regulate the sale of alcohol.

A recent World Health Organisation report highlights the substantial contribution of alcohol to injury, disease, and death worldwide. It proposes that nations use the 2005 framework convention on tobacco control as a model for alcohol control.

Professor Robin Room of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues from the USA, Canada and Finland agree that it is time to adopt such a framework.

On the website of the British Medical Journal, they say there is an "urgent need for international agreements that promote alcohol controls throughout the developing and developed world".

This is becoming more crucial, they believe, in the light of increasing alcohol consumption in the fastest developing regions of the world - East Asia, the Pacific region, and South Asia. "These increases foreshadow future trends in consumption and harm for other developing countries," they warn.

"To counterbalance the globalisation of alcohol trade, we need international agreements that protect public health," they state. "We know more today than ever about which strategies can effectively control alcohol related harms, but policymakers have been slow to put this knowledge into practice."

Policies that tax alcohol and restrict its availability, marketing, and distribution have decreased alcohol-related harm and may reduce health inequities, they argue, and it is no longer realistic to rely on public information campaigns and education programmes.

"The WHO's call to apply the model of the framework convention on tobacco control to control of alcohol is well founded and timely," the experts conclude.

Room, R. et al. International regulation of alcohol. The British Medical Journal, 2008;337:a2364.

Tags: Drug and Alcohol Abuse | World Health

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