Alcohol Industry Should Focus on Health, Not Profit

The Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia (ADCA) today called on the alcohol industry to focus on health issues caused by Ready-to-Drink (RTDs) alcohol beverages, and identify alternatives to help halt excessive alcohol consumption across communities in Australia.

"Conducting surveys of liquor retailers simply to produce statistics aimed at stopping the Government's proposed RTD tax increase does nothing to constructively address alcohol-fuelled incidents that are now a daily occurrence," ADCA Chief Executive Officer, David Templeman said.

"The hiring of independent research consultants by the Distilled Spirits Industry Council of Australia (DSICA) is just another form of self-regulation and fails to take into account the views of alcohol and other drugs (AOD) sector frontline workers faced with the fall-out of industry marketing."

Mr Templeman said if the industry was serious about alcohol problems in Australia, it should be looking to develop strategic partnerships with the AOD sector to work in a collective way to make people more aware of alcohol-related health harm, and to contribute support for prevention and treatment services.

"In March this year, ADCA welcomed commitments by the Fosters Group and Lion Nathan Australia to reduce the alcohol content of Ready to Drinks (RTDs) to two standard drinks in their products," Mr Templeman said.

"Unfortunately, the industry as a whole has not followed-up on this positive step which demonstrated that Fosters and Lion Nathan were at least willing to make it clearer to their customers the levels of alcohol they are consuming.

"The Australian Hotels Association is also to be applauded for its initiative in New South Wales (NSW) on the 'responsible service of alcohol' in relation to the 'traditional mad Monday' end of season celebrations of sporting teams."

Mr Templeman said that over the past 24 hours, NSW Police had placed limits on the amount of alcohol that can be taken legally to the Bathurst 1000 in October, the Queensland State Coroner had noted a person dies at licensed premises every two months from alcohol-related violence. Also, Australian school principals believe one in five students need mental health support because of alcohol and other drugs abuse.

"Alcohol-related harm continues to be a serious community problem. Its high time the alcohol industry started to get involved in examining the dangers and the harms involved with the misuse of their products," Mr Templeman added.

9 September 2008