At the 'public health' trough

Another £3 million of taxpayers' money down the pit

Last week I wrote for The Critic about the Sheffield University alcohol research group continuing to get government grants rolling in despite having been wrong about everything for the best part of 20 years. I also wrote for the Spectator about the deranged war on non-alcoholic drinks by people who supposedly want us to drink less alcohol.

These two themes converged when I saw this article in the BMJ by Sheffield’s John Holmes - who is now a “professor of alcohol policy” - and three like-minded souls. It is titled ‘How should public health respond to rise of alcohol-free and low alcohol drinks?’, to which the answer should be either ‘nothing’ or ‘throw a little party’. Instead, the four amigos - who think they represent ‘public health’ - drone on at great length about the trivial concerns of pointless academics.

To give a very brief sample:

The more people replace alcoholic drinks with nolo [no and low alcohol] alternatives, the more they reduce their risk of alcohol related disease and injury. This is particularly true for heavier drinkers, those in lower socioeconomic groups, and people drinking in high risk circumstances, such as when pregnant, driving, or in adolescence.

Yes, obviously. And that should be the end of the matter, except...

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) and alcohol charities have argued that no and low alcohol drinks also pose risks to public health. The risks include companies using marketing of nolo drinks to deter or circumvent restrictions on alcohol marketing, particularly when they share branding with alcoholic products (so called surrogate marketing). Similarly, nolo drinks or related marketing may encroach on otherwise alcohol-free spaces, such as gyms and sports events or in supermarket lunchtime meal deals.

Who cares what the WHO and ‘alcohol charities’ think? They’ve all been captured by fanatics who want to destroy the booze industry even if it stops selling booze.

The only restrictions on alcohol marketing in the UK are Advertising Standards Authority regulations on content, and those are basically the same for nolo drinks as they are for alcoholic drinks, including the advice that advertisers must “ensure that low alcohol drinks are not promoted in a way that encourages irresponsible or excessive consumption”. Go easy on the alcohol-free wine, ladies!

A few countries have banned alcohol advertising, but that’s their problem. There is no justification for such bans, they are an unwarranted restriction on free speech, and banning one product for no good reason is no justification for making the same mistake with another product.

Sports events are not “alcohol-free spaces” and if someone wants to have an alcohol-free beer in the gym or as part of a meal deal, that’s up to them. I can’t imagine there is much demand for alcohol-free beers at the gym and I’m pretty sure they are not included in meal deals. There is a palpable desperation in this article to find problems where there are none.

They also have the potential to widen health inequalities because of lower take-up among lower socioeconomic groups (which experience higher rates of harm from alcohol).

They would only widen health inequalities if they improve health, and if they improve health then the resistance they are facing from “public health” academics is reprehensible. If you want the health benefits to be spread more widely, you should be in favour of them being advertised. In any case, preventing someone from improving their health because it widens “health inequalities” is unethical.

There is much more of this, but I won’t bore you further. In conclusion, they say that there is a “sparse evidence base” and several “key research priorities”. And who would be well placed to conduct such research if the government decided to pay for some? Someone like Professor Holmes, perhaps? Yes indeed. In fact, he has already relieved taxpayers of exactly £2,190,613.62 to run the ‘No/Lo Project’ at Sheffield University (“A multi-method study of a complex intervention in a complex system”). The first module is:

WP1 will describe what alcohol companies, the UK government and other organisations do to make no/lo drinks easier to buy. It will investigate different sources of information between 2011 and 2025. These include company documents, adverts and interviews with people such as civil servants and campaigners. It will also investigate how alcohol businesses use no/lo drinks to influence Government policy.

How does the alcohol industry make these drinks “easier to buy”? They’re in shops, bars and restaurants. You can buy them online. How much easier could it be? Is it too easy? Should it be harder? Easier to buy than what? Tobacco? Cocaine?

I can only imagine that this module is designed for activist-academics to FOI government departments and find out how many meetings alcohol companies have had with ministers, and then moan about “undue influence” and Big Alcohol presenting itself as “part of the solution” (see also: vaping).

The fourth and final module takes the Sheffield lads back to their happy place:

WP4 will investigate if making no/lo drinks more common improves people’s health and closes the gap in health between richer and poorer people. It will use a computer model that estimates how many people die or go to hospital due to alcohol each year. This model will also test how different ways of promoting no/lo drinks influence people’s health.

It is nailed on that this research will be worthless. The model can only regurgitate the opinions and assumptions of the people who program it, albeit with a spurious degree of mathematical accuracy. The model will not “test” anything. It will be a waste of money.

I know that £3 million isn’t a lot in the great scheme of things and I hate to go on about this, but come on! Isn’t there anybody else in Britain who can carry out fairly basic research like this? The team has already published a number of articles about this issue and they are all obvious, banal or inconclusive. One of them is titled ‘Alibi marketing? Surrogate marketing? Brand sharing? What is the correct terminology to discuss marketing for alcohol-free and low-alcohol products which share branding with regular strength alcohol products?’ Who cares?

Another of their studies found that…

“….those who regularly consumed no/lo drinks and who attempted to restrict drinking due to concerns about future health problems were more likely to drink no/lo drinks to support restriction attempts.”

You don’t say!

“However, it is still inconclusive whether or not using no/lo drinks to restrict drinking was associated with the self-reported success of restriction attempts.”

What a breakthrough!

Spending three million quid on literally anything else would be more worthwhile.