www.alkoholpolitik.ch

Films popular in Europe feature more drinking episodes per movie than their equally popular American counterparts, according to a report by the European Centre for Monitoring Alcohol Marketing (EUCAM).
The trend toward incorporating name brand alcohol in movie scenes as a form of product placement took off more than a decade ago. In 1999, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission reported that in the two previous years, “eight reporting alcohol companies placed alcoholic products in 233 motion pictures and in one or more episodes of 181 different television series.” (Source: Google Alcohol News, 01/02/11) addiction-dirkh.blogspot.com, 01/01/11

Introduction: The alcohol and tobacco industry sell products that can be dangerous to our health. For this reason, governments take action by, for example, raising taxes, enforcing age limits, prescribing warning labels and restricting advertising and sponsoring.
Literature shows that the “industry”—the alcohol and tobacco companies—have traditionally worked closely together, sharing information and concerns about regulation. They have used similar arguments to defend their products in order to prevent or delay restrictions being placed on them (Bond, et al. 2010).
The intention of this brochure is to inform professionals about the attempts made by the alcohol industry to influence alcohol policy globally and to subsequently arm them against the industry’s methods to prevent effective policies from being made. (Source: EUCAM, 01/02/11) „The seven key messages of the alcohol industry“ (pdf) Comment: Very often public health professionals who are not involved in alcohol control policy are not informed what’s happening in this field. And in the political debate they are helpless. This brochure could make a difference.

Government, producers, law enforcement, sellers and parents all have a role to play in bringing about a better drinking culture in this country, writes Tim Salt from the alcohol industry.
Another year, another silly season. Over the past few weeks we have seen the inevitable reports of people getting drunk and behaving badly. During schoolies week it was images of teenagers celebrating the end of school by drinking too much. And on the eve of the new year, we will no doubt see more reports of people drinking to excess and creating a headache for society. Inevitably, anti-alcohol groups have responded as they always do – by attacking the product rather than the behaviour. … (Source: Alcohol Reports, 12/26/10) theage.com.au, 12/26/10 Comment: The alcohol industry complaints that its self regulation doesn’t work. It cannot understand that better prevention measures are needed, e.g. the proposals of the World Health Organization’s global alcohol strategy. We have now the result of decades of alcohol marketing.

The Century Council – that venerable industry front group that purportedly aims to curb drunk driving and underage drinking – has stumped us this time with its holiday-themed responsibility ploy. It’s called the “Snowman Stumble,” an online game apparently intended to teach people about alcohol impairment. In this time-waster, the Century Council wants you to control a snowman walking home from a holiday party, and see how far you can get before the snowman falls over. Source: Marin Institute, 12/21/10)

Fueled largely by an increase in distilled spirits advertising on cable television, the growth rate in youths‘ exposure to televised alcohol ads is outpacing that for adults, according to a Dec. 13 news release from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The report by the center indicated that exposure of youths 12 to 20 to alcohol ads on U.S. television increased 71 percent from 2001 to 2009.
The average TV-watching youth saw 366 alcohol ads in 2009.
„One a day is great for vitamins but not for young people being exposed to alcohol advertising,“ said CAMY director David H. Jernigan, Ph.D.
The center said that the latest numbers were an indication of the failure of voluntary marketing standards in the alcohol industry, under which companies place ads in programming with a youth audience no higher than 30 percent. The report found that 13 percent of youths‘ exposure to alcohol ads last year occurred during programming with more than a 30 percent youth audience. (Source: Join Together, 12/20/10)

With News from the EU-Commission, -Parliament, European Countries, from the WHO, the World, Research and Publication, the Alcohol Industry, etc.
http://eurocare.sydesy.com/press/newsletter/winter_edition_2010

On average, over a third (38%) of soap air time features alcohol, but the negative consequences of drinking to excess are rarely shown, according to new research launched today (8th December) by alcohol awareness charity Drinkaware.1 Despite 162 instances of characters drinking to excess2 over a six week monitoring period, only 1.5% of alcohol scenes portrayed hangovers and less than 1% combined showed alcohol-related sickness, crime, regret or anti-social behaviour. (Source: Medical News Today, 12/08/10)

In summer 2009 the Finnish Government set up a working group to evaluate, among others, whether restrictions on evocative (visual) alcohol advertising were necessary. The working group finished its work in summer 2010 and concluded that no additional measures were needed concerning evocative alcohol advertising. This raised opposition, and consequently a bill proposing that only product information would be allowed to be shown in the commercials was introduced in Parliament in September 2010. Source: Alcohol Reports, 12/06/10) Health Policy Monitor, October 2010. Available at http://www.hpm.org/survey/fi/a16/2hpm.org,

The Portman Group, the organisation for UK drinks producers, has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the strict standards imposed on the alcohol industry by its Code of Practice.
A series of full page ads in the media will highlight the rules and invite people to be on the look-out for any irresponsible alcohol products or marketing campaigns by drinks producers. (Source: Alcohol Reports, 12/02/10) alcoholreports.blogspot.com, 12/02/10 Comment: Self regulation of the industry never works. And this is the best way to make people aware of alcohol advertising. Clever indeed.

Cheap supermarket deals on alcohol are short-termist and damaging to alcohol brand building, while helping to reduce the value of Christmas to the alcohol industry.  That’s the view of research company Mintel as a new study showed that spending on alcohol in the fourth quarter declined from £11.5bn in 2009 (probably 2008, htm) to £10.4bn in 2009, costing the industry over a billion pounds in lost revenue. It forecasts a bigger drop this year…. (Source: Google Alcohol News, 12/03/10) morningadvertiser.co.uk, 12/03/10