www.alkoholpolitik.ch

Food and alcohol firms are obliged to maximise profit. To include them in health policy planning is a recipe for disaster.
by Anna Gilmore and Jeff Collin
Alarm bells rang in the public health community when Andrew Lansley announced last summer that leading food and alcohol companies were being invited to join a „partnership“ with government to help address the obesity and alcohol epidemics. As further details of the Public Health Responsibility Deal for alcohol emerge, much through investigative work by the Guardian, the bells ring ever louder.
The Public Health Responsibility Deal, part of the government’s „big society“ idea, is just one of several such deals. For alcohol and obesity, it brings together large numbers of food and alcohol company representatives with far fewer government and public health representatives in a series of „networks“ charged with encouraging and enabling consumers to adopt better diets and drink sensibly. However, full details of their function or how they relate to broader public health policies have yet to emerge. (Source: Alcohol Reports, 02/22/11) guardian.co.uk, 21 February 2011 our Comment: This is a very competent article. But most of the readers are not informed enough to understand and accept it. Education is needed. Not in order to reduce alcohol harm but to understand the problem and which control measures are necessary to reduce consumption and alcohol related harm. We are all passiv-drinkers. We suffer from reduced quality of life and we pay without beeing asked to, our whole life for immense alcohol related social costs. This is a big loss of freedom.