Health First: An evidence-based alcohol strategy for the UK

Health First: an evidence-based alcohol strategy for the UK
Recommendations
The sale of alcohol products that appeal
more to children and young people than
to adults should be prohibited.
An independent body should be
established to regulate alcohol
promotion, including product and
packaging design, in the interests of
public health and community safety.
Product labels
Health warnings are now a familiar and prominent
feature on all tobacco products. Likewise, detailed
nutritional labelling is ubiquitous on food products
and soft drinks. Yet the consumer information on
alcohol products usually extends no further than a
figure describing the strength of the alcohol content.
Despite their substantial impact on both health and
nutrition, many alcohol products are labelled with
minimal regard for either. The producer has a free
hand to exploit the label to promote the brand.
From a consumer perspective, this is an extraordinary
anomaly. The objective of food labelling is to support
consumers in making informed decisions about
what they eat and drink. The absence of meaningful
information on alcohol products leaves consumers
uninformed about one of the most harmful products
they purchase.
There is evidence that the inclusion of health warnings
on alcohol products increases consumers’ knowledge
and awareness of the adverse health impacts of
behaviour supports the case for change 6 , as does the
wider literature on the impact of product warnings 7 .
In order to be effective in informing the consumer about
his or her risk, the labelling of alcohol products ought
to include salient health warnings and unit information
alongside nutritional and calorie information. The
inclusion of unit information would help to address
the low level of understanding of alcohol units among
drinkers 7 . Health warnings should be varied to address
the many potential harms to health of drinking.
Recommendations
At least one third of every alcohol
product label should be given over to an
evidence-based health warning specified
by an independent regulatory body.
Every alcohol product label should
describe, in legible type, the product’s
nutritional, calorie and alcohol content.
There is also considerable scope to communicate
unit information in other settings. In pubs and bars,
unit information ought to be displayed prominently
at the point of sale. Likewise when alcohol is sold in
supermarkets, the till receipts ought to show the
number of units of alcohol purchased. Customer loyalty
card data could also be used to inform customers about
how many units of alcohol they have bought.
Consumers need a framework of risk within which to
make sense of information about how much alcohol
they are consuming. Existing governmental guidelines
are based on a report by the Royal College of Physicians
in 1987 9 , subsequently revised upwards in 1995
despite a lack of evidence for the change 10 . The revised
The absence of meaningful information on alcohol
products leaves consumers uninformed about one
of the most harmful products they purchase
alcohol 4,5 . Evidence of the impact of warnings on actual
drinking behaviour is more equivocal: improvements
in information and knowledge may not be sufficient to
trigger action but they provide a necessary foundation
for action. However, the evidence of the impact
of tobacco product health warnings on smoking
guidelines have been criticised as promoting levels of
alcohol consumption above a ‘low risk’ threshold 11 .
The Chief Medical Officer’s current review of these
guidelines is a prerequisite for the introduction of
health warnings and unit information on alcohol
products.
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