www.alkoholpolitik.ch

EUROPEAN COMMISSION, HEALTH & CONSUMERS DIRECTORATE-GENERAL, Directorate C – Public Health and Risk Assessment
Unit C4 – Health Determinants, Brussels 17 November 2011
Summary Report, 12/22/11

Die Tabak­industrie hat die unvermeid­liche Regulierung von Aroma- und Zusatzstoffen durch die US-Arzneibehörde FDA vorher­gesehen. Der Hersteller Philipp Morris hat rechtzeitig klinische Prüfungen durchführen lassen, bei deren Publikation die Risiken laut einer Studie in PLoS Medicine (2011; 8: e1001145) jedoch bewusst verharmlost worden seien.

Heutige Zigaretten enthalten neben dem Tabak noch eine Reihe von Zusatzstoffen, mit denen sich der Geschmack und die Abgabe von Nikotin steuern lassen. Beides hat vermutlich Auswirkungen auf die Initiation und das spätere Suchtverhalten der Raucher. Der Hersteller musste durch die bevorstehende Regulierung der Zusatzstoffe deshalb wirtschaftliche Nachteile befürchten.

Philip Morris hat hierauf frühzeitig reagiert, wie das Team um Stanton Glantz vom Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education an der Universität von Kalifornien in San Francisco recherchiert hat, zu dem auch Thomas Kyriss von der Klinik Schillerhöhe in Gerlingen gehört.

Das Team hat interne Unterlagen des Herstellers ausgewertet, die in den USA im Rahmen von Schadenersatzklagen öffentlich gemacht wurden. Die Legacy Tobacco Documents Library an der Universität von San Francisco hat 11 Millionen Dokumente im Internet veröffentlicht. Mit einer speziellen Suchstrategie gelang es den Mitarbeitern von Glantz einige Dokumente zu finden, die auf das Projekt MIX verwiesen. Es hatte die Auswirkungen von 333 Inhaltsstoffen untersucht. …
(Quelle: aerzteblatt.de, 21.12.11)
Kommentar: Schade, dass nicht auch auf Dokumente der Alkoholindustrie zugegriffen werden kann. Was käme wohl da alles ans Tageslicht?

20.12.2011
Redaktion
Tages-Anzeiger
Leserforum
Zürich

Leserbrief zu „Kommission des Bundes lobbyiert für Volksinitiative“ vom 20.12.11

Die Eidgenössische Kommission für Tabakprävention forderte das Parlament auf, die Volksinitiative der Lungenliga für ein Rauchverbot in öffentlichen Räumen anzunehmen, damit in der Schweiz eine einheitliche Regelung möglich werde. Nun empören sich einige bürgerliche Politiker, die Kommission überschreite ihre Kompetenzen und in der Kommission würden Leute sitzen, die im Initiativkomitee und in Fachverbänden wirkten.

Diese ausserparlamentarischen Eidgenössischen Fachkommissionen haben den Auftrag, Bundesrat und Parlament in ihrem Spezialgebiet zu beraten. Der Bundesrat ist ihrem Antrag nicht gefolgt, jetzt hat sie das Parlament informiert. Was soll daran schon falsch sein? Dass einige Parlamentarier jetzt protestieren, ist nicht verwunderlich. Sie sind es seit jeher nicht gewohnt, Informationen von Fachleuten unvoreingenommen zu prüfen. Viel wichtiger sind ihnen ihre Lobbyisten von Seiten der Suchtmittelindustrie.

Fast alle der 15 Kommissionsmitglieder sind von der Bundesverwaltung unabhängig. Es ist für sie eine sehr undankbare Arbeit, wenn sie von den Behörden, die sie beraten sollten, immer wieder desavouiert werden. Das kostet unser Land jedes Jahr Milliarden an suchtmittelbedingten Sozialkosten. Wirksame, evidenzbasierte Prävention würde sich auszahlen.

Freundliche Grüsse
Hermann T. Meyer, Effretikon

Am 22.12.2011 leicht gekürzt veröffentlicht.

The Appellate Body, on 21 December 2011, issued its reports in the case “Philippines — Taxes on Distilled Spirits” (WT/DS396/AB/R and WT/DS403/AB/R).
> Appellate Body Report: http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news11_e/396_403abr_e.htm

Addressing harmful use of alcohol is essential to realising the goals of the UN Resolution on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) And many other actual items, e.g.:
UNITED NATIONS ADOPT POLITICAL DECLARATION ON NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES
GAPA gives qualified Welcome to the Declaration
Conflict of Interest Coalition Statement of Concern
Alcohol consumption guidelines ‘inadequate for cancer prevention’: “No level of alcohol consumption without risk”
The Size and Burden of Mental Disorders and Other Disorders of the Brain in Europe – “It’s worse than we thought”
Valuable alcohol resource free to good home
Health Officials Advocate Measures to Curb Harmful Use of Alcohol in the Americas
(Source: ias.org.uk)

Gemäss dem revidierten Gesundheitsgesetz dürfen ab 2012 Jugendliche eingesetzt werden, um Alkohol- und Tabakverkäufer zu testen. Gebüsst werden die Verkäufer bei Verstössen aber nicht. Grund dafür: Der Testkauf ist eine verdeckte Ermittlung.

So hat es das Zürcher Obergericht in einem Fall Mitte November entschieden. Die Erkenntnisse aus den Testkäufen dürften in einem Strafverfahren nicht verwendet werden, begründete das Obergericht. Die Statthalter des Kantons Zürich haben nun entschieden, niemanden zu büssen, von dem Testkäufer Alkohol oder Tabak erhalten haben. Das teilte die Statthalterkonferenz am Dienstag mit. (Quelle: Tages-Anzeiger, 20.12.11; NZZ, 20.12.11)
unser Online-Kommentar: Was für die Alkoholpolitik als Ganzes gilt, stimmt auch für den Jugendschutz in Bezug auf Alkohol: Ein skandalöses Trauerspiel.
Die Politik weigert sich seit jeher, die Schäden zu reduzieren und die verursachende Industrie in die Pflicht zu nehmen, nach dem Prinzip, die Schäden der Allgemeinheit, die Profite der Industrie. Beim Jugendschutz gibt es immer nur Minimallösungen, die nicht genügen. Seit über 10 Jahren gibt es Testkäufe. Aber noch immer ist bei rund einem Viertel der Tests keine Einsicht der Geschäftsleute sichtbar. Gewisse Politiker und Parteien lehnen sogar die Testkäufe ab, obwohl sie sonst nicht genug davon schwärmen können, wie sehr sie ihr Land lieben.

Warning labels aimed at pregnant women will be added to all alcohol products in New Zealand and Australia.

The Australian and New Zealand Ministerial Council on Food Regulation agreed to introduce labelling telling of the risks of drinking alcohol during pregnancy at a Melbourne meeting last week in response to the recommendations of the independent Food Policy and Labelling Review.
The labelling will be regulated in two year’s time. …
(Source: Alcohol Reports, News, 12/20/11) nzherald.co.nz, 12/16/11

Research that claims lifting the price of alcohol will not curb binge drinking has been denounced by a leading alcohol health promotion group.

The research, from Australia’s Griffith University, found there was no significant change to the number of occasions people engaged in binge drinking when the price of liquor rose.

However, price rises did increase the number of days people went alcohol-free, while the the number of days people consumed between one and four drinks (non-binge drinking) also fell.

But Alcohol Healthwatch director Rebecca Williams said overall research had shown that price was one of the best tools available to reduce overall consumption and harm.

„Price is probably the sharpest tool in the shed as a mechanism for affecting harm. The overall research is very, very clear that it does target the things we need to target, which is the early drinking in young people, and the heavy drinking.“

The Law Commission recommendations on alcohol reform included a 50 per cent increase in excise tax, which would increase the price of alcohol by about 10 per cent on average.

The Griffith University research analysed household surveys of almost 80,000 people and asked them how their behaviour would change with a 1 per cent increase in the price of alcohol.

„There may be a need to broaden the net and better identify what policies can and cannot do and investigate alternatives to price increases,“ researcher Joshua Byrnes said.

Source: Alcohol Reports, 12/20/11) stuff.co.nz, 12/18/11

Comment: No wonder they didn’t find a significant change when asking about an increase of 1 per cent. Even a 10% increase could be too little.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 19 December 1874
Human beings, like animals, are greatly influenced by the conditions amidst which they exist. If we crowd animals together, limit their supply of air and sunlight, they become weak and irritable, they mope, sicken, and die. Man differs from animals in his greater impressionability and consequent greater capacity for enjoyment, as well as in his tendency to deteriorate under adverse conditions.

In nearly all our most populous districts it will be found that the people are surrounded by circumstances which are directly opposed to their comfort, health, and general well-being. What is most of all important is that women and children, those most susceptive to the action of deteriorative influences, are those who are most exposed. Take the case of the mothers of families in these localities. Restricted within the limits of small confined dwellings, which are so shut in on all sides that the invigorating rays of the sun seldom gain direct access; the air heavy with impurities; a life of care and anxiety, unrelieved by change or pleasurable incident; wearied by the monotonous aspect of all around them, worn by nursing and by toil, fretted by narrow means, pained by the cries or worried by the fractiousness of children, is it surprising that they lose their health, elasticity, good looks, cheery smiles, and interest in themselves and their families? Is it any wonder that, becoming spiritless, they lack neatness, allow their children and dwellings to become untidy and neglected? Is it then any wonder that the husbands of such women become petulant and unkind, or that their children become disrespectful? Is it any wonder that in this accumulation of misery these unfortunate women are easily persuaded to seek solace in the deceitful and seductive properties of gin or beer? A woman under such adverse circumstances languishes, whilst in beer she finds that which speedily raises her failing spirits, in wine or gin she renews her youth, and banishes melancholy. Need we be surprised that in tens of thousands of cases the women who reside amid conditions so adverse to health and to comfort slide into habits of drinking which only aggravate their misfortunes, making the craving for relief all the greater, until after a time the love of liquor becomes a consuming passion? …
(Source: Alcohol Reports, 12/20/11) The Guardian, Monday 19 December 2011
Comment: How the troubles begun.

Scientific Opinion of the Science Group of the European Alcohol and Health Forum

From the Foreword: The enormous burden of individual harm (often to those around the problem drinker as well as the drinker themselves) and aggregated lost productivity that are highlighted in the report should make it clear to all that inactivity is not an option and complacency will cost lives. We owe it to the populations we serve to use every opportunity that is founded in sound evidence to preserve and improve health and this report should lay the foundations of applying this to the workplace. But the workplace cannot be taken in isolation: just as work affects health and wellbeing beyond the workplace, so do many factors outside work, such as the price, availability and marketing of alcohol, or access to social programs and general healthcare reflect back on the health of the workforce. The Science Group believes that the European Commission across its various directorates has the potential to be a vital catalyst for good practice in this two-way process.
Professor Ian Gilmore
Chair, Science Group
From the Summary:
Impact of alcohol on the workplace and productivity
Globally, alcohol is the world’s number one risk factor for ill-health and premature death amongst the 25-59 year old age group, the core of the working age population. It is unsurprising, therefore that lost productivity costs feature as the dominant element in social costs studies arising from the harm done by alcohol (contributing to one half or more of the
total social costs). Becoming unemployed worsens alcohol-related harm, and heavy drinking, itself, leads to unemployment. Alcohol is a significant risk factor for absenteeism and presenteeism at work, largely in a dose response manner, with a relationship between societal and individual level of alcohol consumption and sickness absence. Although some studies have reported a positive impact of alcohol consumption on earnings, a proxy measure of productivity, a meta-analysis of relevant studies suggested that the relationship was an artefact. Often forgotten is the impact of drinkers on the productivity of people other than the drinker. An Australian study found this to be comparable in cost size as the lost
productivity costs of the drinkers themselves. The work place itself also impacts on alcoholrelated harm. Certain occupations (in particular bar staff and sea workers) are at particular risk, and, in general, stressful working environments increase the risk of alcohol-related harm.
(Source: Alcohol Reports, 12/18/11) ec.europa.eu, Sept. 2011
Comment: This report should be taken into account by all industrial leaders and governments. Especially interesting the part about the role of abstainers. It’s the same „artefact“ as we see in studies on alcohol and health.