INTA Urges Scotland to Reject Restrictions on Alcohol Advertising

In 2022, Scotland, following in the footsteps of several other European jurisdictions, launched a public consultation on whether alcohol marketing should be restricted in order to reduce the attractiveness of alcohol consumption to young people.

By the end of 2022, the Scottish government introduced proposals to reduce and restrict alcohol marketing, including prohibiting alcohol advertisements in outdoor public spaces, reducing in-store promotions, and eliminating sponsorships of sports and live events by alcohol brands. The rationale of the consultation was based on research summarized in the introduction to the publication “Consultation on Restricting Alcohol Advertising and Promotion:”

A number of systematic reviews of these studies assert that there is a strong relationship between children and young people seeing or interacting with alcohol marketing and then starting to drink alcohol, or if they already drink alcohol, drink more.

However, not all studies agree on the relationship between marketing and higher alcohol consumption.

The recent study published by the education charity Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in July 2023, shows the opposite. The IEA report found multiple studies conducted in the past 50 years concluded that advertisement bans do not generally reduce overall alcohol consumption. Although several countries have introduced alcohol advertising bans, the results have rarely been evaluated.

The IEA report also comments on the split between the studies published by public health campaigners and the studies conducted by economists. While the former conclude that alcohol advertising has a significant impact on drinking in general, the latter conclude that there is no statistical evidence supporting that claim.

The same report also stresses that the study of alcohol advertising poses several methodological challenges, “but [that] there is no robust evidence in favour of alcohol advertising bans.” The IEA is also of the view that studies published by public health campaigners “produced mixed and contradictory results.”

It also demonstrates that studies/surveys conducted by advocates of alcohol advertising bans can suffer from “well-known problems of recall bias, endogeneity and reverse causation that render them unreliable.” It seems that economic studies have tended to find a lack of association between advertising and overall consumption, which is likely driven by many different external factors. While comparing and analyzing the studies, the IEA concludes that alcohol advertising bans show that they have only a small potential effect on overall alcohol consumption, but that they certainly influence the market share of alcohol manufacturers and specific brand retailers. Indeed, it seems that advertisements can increase the sale of specific brands but do not increase overall sales of alcohol products.

INTA submitted a response to the public consultation in Scotland supporting alternative means to achieve the health-related goals and concerns associated with alcohol consumption, primarily through educational campaigns. INTA provided its perspective on the potential consequences of the restrictions, such as job loss, consequent increase in requests for social assistance, tax loss, and a weakening of the Scotch whiskey geographical indication. .

Although admiring the goal of the proposal, the Scottish Prime Minister sent its authors back to the drawing board and encouraged them to work with the alcohol industry and other public stakeholders: “I believe that all of us want to reduce the harm caused by alcohol, particularly to young people—but without undermining Scotland’s world class drinks industry or tourism sector.”

Although every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of this article, readers are urged to check independently on matters of specific concern or interest.

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