The U.K. should ban alcohol advertising, including sports sponsorships, and end promotions such as happy hours, the British Medical Association said.
The measures are needed to combat the epidemic of excessive drinking, particularly among young people, the doctors’ group said in a report released today. The association also recommended higher alcohol taxes, setting a minimum price on a unit of alcohol and reducing the opening hours of pubs and bars.
“There is just too much advertising pushing people to drink,” Gerard Hastings, one of the report’s authors and a professor of social marketing at the University of Stirling and Open University, said at a London news conference. “The only sensible thing is to completely ban alcohol advertising.”
Companies that sell beer, wine and spirits spend about 800 million pounds ($1.33 billion) a year advertising their products, according to the report. The doctors’ group also cited figures estimating that alcohol-related illnesses cause the deaths of 40,000 Britons and cost the U.K.’s National Health Service about 2 billion pounds a year.
Women in the U.K. drink an average of 14 units of alcohol a week and men consume about 21, said Charles George, who was chairman of the BMA’s Board of Science until July. Increased drinking over the past 30 years has driven up the occurrence of severe liver diseases such as cirrhosis 10-fold in 25- to 44- year-old men and nine-fold among women that age, George said.
“If you are a young person, your liver is more vulnerable to damage than in an older adult or an elderly person,” he said.
Soccer, Music
Current regulations restrict alcohol advertisers from associating their drinks with sporting prowess or youth culture. Hastings said companies were exploiting loopholes in those rules to sponsor soccer clubs and music festivals, which aim to appeal to younger people.
Carling, a beer brand owned by Molson Coors Brewing Co., sponsors a professional soccer tournament in England, as well as the shirts of the two Glasgow clubs, Celtic and Rangers. Players on the Liverpool team wear jerseys with the name of Carlsberg A/S’s flagship beer brand.
“We think we have a sensible attitude towards our sports sponsorships as we, for example, don’t attempt to mix youths into our advertising,” Keld Strudahl, Carlsberg’s chief of marketing, said today in a telephone interview. Strudahl said he wouldn’t comment specifically on the BMA report because he hadn’t read it.
Sponsorship Deal
The brewer, the Nordic region’s biggest, today signed a four-year sponsorship deal with the U.K. Football Association, which includes the English national soccer team, the FA Cup and Wembley Stadium in London.
Diageo Plc, the London-based maker of Johnnie Walker whisky and Guinness stout, said alcohol advertising was already tightly regulated and a ban would be a “one-size-fits-all” prescription for a complex problem.
“Not only do we strictly adhere to the guidelines covering both the content and placement of alcohol advertising, we go further than this and follow the spirit of the code as well as the letter of it,” the company said in an e-mailed statement.
A spokesman for Paris-based Pernod Ricard SA, whose brands include Absolut vodka and Chivas Regal whisky, didn’t return a call seeking comment.
Paul Hegarty, a U.K. spokesman for Denver-based Molson Coors, referred calls to the Portman Group, a U.K. industry association that sets standards for alcohol advertising.
“The BMA is ignoring all the evidence that advertising causes brand switching, not harmful drinking,” David Poley, Portman Group’s chief executive, said in an e-mailed statement.
Price Competition
He said a ban wouldn’t improve the U.K.’s drinking culture and could even be counterproductive, citing a University of Sheffield study that found it would create fiercer price competition which could increase overall consumption. More education and law enforcement are needed to bring about social change, he said.
Hastings said research shows that alcohol advertising affects youngsters’ behavior. The earlier they are exposed to commercial messages, the sooner they begin to drink and the more they drink, he said.
Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the medical association, said the U.K.’s Labor government must “dissociate itself with this industry and get away from the cozy relationship.” In 2005, the government permitted pubs and bars to remain open as late as they choose, extending their hours past the traditional 11 p.m. closing time.
‘Substantial Progress’
A spokesman for the U.K. Department of Health said the government had made “substantial progress in tackling alcohol harm,” including a one-third decline in alcohol-related violence since 1995, and has proposed a mandatory code to crack down on irresponsible sellers.
“We’re working harder than ever to reduce alcohol harm -- but it’s not always right to legislate,” Julia Taylor, the spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement. “We take all evidence into account and react proportionately.”
The BMA leaders said it may be initially difficult to obtain political support for a complete ban and compared their recommendations to calls to restrict smoking in enclosed public places 10 years ago. The public might be brought around to more restrictions by savings to the health system and less drunken and disorderly behavior in public places, Nathanson said.
“If we can all walk down the street and not see people who are ill or semi-conscious, that is a cost well worth paying,” said Nathanson.
To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Andrea Gerlin in London at agerlin@bloomberg.net