ISBA offers alternative to Government alcohol warnings plan
LONDON - ISBA is seeking to head off the Government's latest 'Safe. Sensible. Social' alcohol warnings plan by proposing an industry campaign as a more effective alternative.
The Government is considering proposals including restrictions on free tastings and happy hour offers and compulsory health warnings wherever alcoholic drinks are sold, while wine in restaurants could have to be served in glasses with marked measures.
The 'Safe. Sensible. Social' consultation suggested that the industry retailing code needs to be revised with a view to making it mandatory in retail premises that sell alcohol.
The industry's alternative plan would involve a significant educational marketing campaign developed to complement the Department of Health's efforts to tackle alcohol misuse.
Ian Twinn, director of public affairs at ISBA, the voice of British advertisers, said that further statutory regulation of alcohol advertising was unnecessary and that warnings in alcohol ads don't work.
He said an industry campaign would "harness the power of advertising and marketing to reinforce the official alcohol strategy.
"It would deliver a new, voluntary consumer education campaign designed to help tackle alcohol misuse in our society by changing attitudes towards the social acceptability of drunkenness."
Twinn also warned that "taking oversight of alcohol ads away from the ASA would damage the UK's existing self-regulatory system - already one of the best-funded and most rigorously enforced systems of ad regulation in the world.
"Instead, industry wants to employ its considerable expertise and resources to work alongside the Government to help bring about ministers' alcohol harm reduction objectives."
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