Shot: Anti-booze groups held a conference on influencing government policy.
Chaser: Two government agencies were involved with the event.
The 2018 Alcohol Policy Conference convened in Washington, D.C. on April 11-13, with objectives that included “illuminating and influencing policy-making process at local, state, regional, national, and international levels.”
Influencing should be easy, since the conference website listed two government agencies involved in alcohol policy. The NIH’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) were both listed as “partners, stakeholders and supporters.” (SAMHSA employees were also listed as presenters.)
Although fine print claimed that “implies neither sponsorship nor endorsement of AP18 content or speakers,” if things were turned around — and policy-making government agencies involved were going to a conservative conference or industry event designed to “influence” that particular policy the left would certainly cry foul. The conference, as well as participation of government agencies in it, went unreported by the broadcast networks and national newspapers.
Anti-alcohol and anti-industry perspectives were obvious from the program descriptions. The organizers of AP18 called themselves a coalition “independent of commercial interests.” There were sessions about “deceptive industry messages of ‘healthy drinking,’” “secondhand harms” of alcohol, and “public health countermeasures to minimize the harmful effects of the alcohol industry” among many others.
One session intended to focus on overcoming the “sense of hypocrisy” holding back some people who want to be advocates for alcohol control policy, but who do partake of alcohol themselves. That would focus on asking “how do we change the narrative from ‘do as I say, not as I do’ to a narrative of population health promotion?”
Another presentation focused on research that “suggests that alcohol outlets create and exacerbate negative public health outcomes” including “community violence.” While another from a group called Vital Strategies complained that the “alcohol control effort suffers from the absence of clear messaging” and advertised that they had “developed a practical guide for alcohol control and policy messaging.”
Ahead of the full conference was a session devoted even more specifically to alcohol advocacy. The inaugural “Advocate Institute” was open only to “local-and state-level advocates from nonprofits and public health agencies with a commitment that they and their organization are free of commercial interests, including alcohol industry influence.”
In it, attendees would learn “strategies” for turning research into “public health practice.”
The organizers clearly anticipated government officials would be attending, since the networking and exchange of ideas between “researchers, government officials, and community members” was also listed under its objectives.
