The alcohol advertising bluff

‘Public health’ groups are insistent that banning alcohol advertising would reduce the number of alcohol-related deaths. Very insistent. Here are some quotes from Alcohol Focus Scotland (a state-funded pressure group) in a report cited by the Scottish government in its 2022 consultation on alcohol advertising regulation: 

 

Research has now established a causal connection between children and young people’s exposure to alcohol marketing and drinking (p. 7) 

There is a wealth of evidence that exposure to alcohol marketing is causally linked to consumption. (p. 34) 

There is conclusive evidence of a small but consistent association of advertising with consumption at a population level. (p. 34) 

Significantly, research published since the Network’s first report has now established a causal connection between children and young people’s exposure to alcohol marketing and drinking. (p. 41)

The evidence is clear that exposure to alcohol marketing is a cause of youth drinking. This is the conclusion reached by researchers applying the same methodology that established the causal link between tobacco and cancer. (p. 41)

 

Pretty unequivocal, isn’t it? There is not only a strong association between alcohol advertising and drinking/youth drinking but the association has been proven to be causal!

When I first saw this, I had read enough studies about alcohol advertising to know that this was, at best, an exaggeration and I knew enough about the social sciences to know that proving causality is virtually impossible, but I hadn’t read all the studies. So I decided to read all the studies and found that the evidence was even weaker than I thought.

I have summarised the literature in a report that was published by the IEA today titled Alcohol Advertising: What does the evidence show?

Put simply, there are four different types of evidence.

 

1. Studies looking at the impact of alcohol advertising restrictions/bans. There are not many of these but most of them don’t find an effect on alcohol consumption.

2. Survey-based public health studies. There are a lot of these and nearly all of them find some effect on some measure of consumption. However, they don’t measure exposure to alcohol advertising subjectively. They rely on people recalling how many adverts they’ve seen. This means they are wide open to recall bias which is a big problem because people who are interested in a product are more likely to pay attention when it is advertised. Advertisers also target demographics who are most likely to buy their product so there is an in-built bias.

3. Randomised controlled trials in which people watch a film or TV show interspersed with adverts for alcohol (or another product in the control group) and the researchers see if they reach for a drink. There have been about ten of these and they have provided very mixed results. A slight majority find no effect.

4. Studies looking at alcohol advertising expenditure and alcohol consumption. There are quite a few of these and nearly all of them find no effect. Unlike the public health studies, they have the advantage of measuring advertising subjectively.

 

The conclusion is, rather boringly, that the evidence mixed and conflicting. But one thing can be said for sure: banning alcohol adverts is not an evidence-based policy.

A Cochrane Review — considered the gold standard of scientific evidence — concluded in 2014 that: “There is currently a lack of robust evidence for or against recommending the implementation of alcohol advertising restrictions.” I can only concur.

As for the claim that there is a causal link between alcohol advertising and youth drinking, I wrote about that for The Critic.

 

This is bluffing on an epic scale. Thanks to the alchemy of academic publishing, once a couple of zealots get their opinion printed in a journal it becomes a fact to be recited forevermore by pressure groups.

 

Have a read.

The report has been covered by the Times, Daily Mail, Scotsman, Express, Independent, Herald, ITV and many others.

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