Stakeholders’ views of alcohol policy

Method

A questionnaire survey was completed by stakeholders (country counterparts ofthe European Commission’s Alcohol and Health Working Group (mostly governmentofficials), country and European non-governmental organizations that have a remit onalcohol policy, and representative bodies of the beverage alcohol industry, who arestakeholders of the European Commission’s Alcohol and Health Working group). Thequestionnaire ascertained views of the impact and importance of a range of alcohol policymeasures, implementation estimates of the WHO European Alcohol Action Plan (2000-2005) and of the 2001 Council Recommendation on the drinking of alcohol by youngpeople, and perceived advances and barriers for alcohol policy at the country andEuropean levels.

Impact and importance of alcohol policy measures

Representatives of the alcoholindustry (AIs) tended to hold different views than representatives of governmental (GOs)and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who were more similar in their views. TheAIs viewed regulatory measures as of low impact and policy importance (with a meanscore for policy impact of 1.4 (on a range from 0, no impact, to 10, very high impact) andfor policy importance of 1.6) in strong contrast to both NGOs (with a score for policy impactof 7.4 and policy importance of 8.2) and GOs (with a score for policy impact of 7.3 andpolicy importance of 8.2). AIs were more favourable to educational measures (with a scorefor policy impact of 8.7 and policy importance of 8.7) than either NGOs (with a score forpolicy impact of 4.8 and policy importance of 6.3) or GOs (with a score for policy impact of6.0 and policy importance of 6.7). All three groups were similar and positive in their viewsof the impact and importance of implementation measures and of interventions forhazardous and harmful alcohol consumption.