February 16, 2012 | 11:15 AM | By

Commentary: WHO Should Regulate Alcohol Globally

FILED UNDER: Personal Health, Politics, alcohol, world health organization

When you think about world-wide public health crises what jumps to mind? AIDS, malaria, malnutrition?

How about heavy drinking? Probably not.

Well, this thoughtful piece in the current Scientific American details arguments by Devi Sridhar, a health-policy expert at the University of Cambridge, who writes that the World Health Organization ought to start regulating alcohol, which “kills more than 2.5 million people annually, more than AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis.” Christopher Wanjek reports:

For middle-income people, who constitute half the world’s population, alcohol is the top health risk factor, greater than obesity, inactivity and even tobacco.

The World Health Organization has meticulously documented the extent of alcohol abuse in recent years and has published solid recommendations on how to reduce alcohol-related deaths, but this doesn’t go far enough, according to Sridhar…

In a commentary appearing [February 15] in the journal Nature, Sridhar argues that the WHO should regulate alcohol at the global level, enforcing such regulations as a minimum drinking age, zero-tolerance drunken driving, and bans on unlimited drink specials. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Abiding by the regulations would be mandatory for the WHO’s 194 member states.

Far from prohibition, the WHO regulations would force nations to strengthen weak drinking laws and better enforce laws already in place, Sridhar says.

(Thanks to Kaiser Health News for posting the link.)

About the author

Blogger, CommonHealth Rachel Zimmerman worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years, most recently covering health and medicine out of the paper’s Boston bureau. Rachel has also written for The New York Times, the (now-defunct) Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the alternative newspaper Willamette Week, in Portland, Ore., among other publications. Rachel co-wrote a book about birth, published by Bantam/Random House, and spent 2008 as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rachel lives in Cambridge with her husband and two daughters. View all posts by Rachel Zimmerman →

  • R Scalettar

    As a former chairman of the American Medical Association and a medical advisor to the Distilled Spirits Council, I feel it’s important to comment on this article.  The alcohol industry is strongly opposed to abusive alcohol consumption in any form.  We support the World Health Organization’s (WHO) ongoing Global Alcohol Strategy on the Harmful Use of Alcohol, which was adopted unanimously in 2010 by its 193 member states.  They decided not to pursue a tobacco-like framework convention on alcohol because one size does not fit all, and most individuals around the world drink moderately and responsibly.
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    Thus, we strongly disagree with the Nature commentary by University of Oxford professor Devi Sridhar calling for a simplistic prescription to address all alcohol problems in different countries in the same manner.Â
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    As WHO points out, illegal and potentially poisonous unregulated alcohol in places such as Russia and some developing countries are responsible for much of the harm.  Raising taxes on legitimate products will only increase this dangerous consumption of illicit alcohol.  The population-based control measures advocated by Sridhar are also clearly not appropriate for countries like the United States.  Here, underage drinking and drunk driving rates have reached historic lows levels through tough law enforcement, education and targeted interventions.Â
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    Further, according to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of heart disease, the leading cause of death among women and men in the United States.  Many studies also show moderate alcohol consumption is associated with the lowest all-cause mortality among middle-aged and older adults.  In fact, a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited moderate alcohol consumption as one of four key healthy lifestyle behaviors.Â
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    Even WHO acknowledges the beneficial health effects of moderate alcohol consumption and that most of the adult population drinks at low-risk levels or abstains altogether.  To the extent, that moderate consumers would be most affected by this heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all approach, those benefits would be lost.
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    Far better is WHO’s current Global Alcohol Strategy where all stakeholders are working together.  It’s time that anti-alcohol advocates stop undermining this process that is working well.
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    Raymond Scalettar, M.D., D.Sc.Â
    Clinical Professor of Medicine, George Washington University Medical CenterÂ
    Former Chair of the American Medical Association, Medical advisor to the Distilled Spirits Council

    • PublicHealthMatters

      Seriously, Mr. Scalettar? You tout your role as former chair of the AMA and then do the bidding of the alcohol industry? Shameful. Integrity tells us that first we decide if we’re for sale, then all we do is dicker on price. 

  • Reasonable?

    Shouldn’t countries regulate alcohol consumption autonomously?
    Why doe the WHO need to do this?