Published 9 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3637
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3637

News

Report recommends banning alcohol advertising and raising prices

Mark Gould

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

All alcohol advertising and marketing should be banned, alcohol prices must rise, and the government should sever links with "counterproductive" healthy drinking campaigns financed by the industry, a scathing report has said.

Under the Influence, written by the BMA board of science, which was chaired by former chief medical officer Kenneth Calman, warns that the true extent of alcohol misuse in the United Kingdom is vastly underestimated.

It says that alcohol sales have increased steadily in the past 20 years whereas data on alcohol consumption show that increase to have slowed in the past 5 to 10 years.

"Survey underestimation of alcohol intake may be as much as 50%. This suggests that levels of alcohol consumption in the UK may be increasingly underestimated and therefore levels of future harm in the population will also be understated," it concludes.

The authors blame policies on alcohol pricing, marketing, availability, and sponsorship, . . . [Full text of this article]


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