Source: Alcohol Healthwatch
We all want the most up-to-date information to help us make informed choices for ourselves and our families.
This is why today Alcohol Healthwatch have just posted the most recent evidence-based low-risk drinking guidelines on their website.
New Zealand’s drinking guidelines are out of date and do not align with research showing there is no safe level of alcohol consumption, particularly for cancer risk.
Information obtained by RNZ shows the alcohol industry has worked to pause a review of the official low-risk drinking guidelines for New Zealand. These guidelines have not been updated since their release in 2011.
” Quality, evidence-based drinking guidelines are crucial to help people understand the risk from alcohol, and evidence shows risk is present even at low levels of alcohol consumption,” says Andrew Galloway, Executive Director of Alcohol Healthwatch.
“Low-risk drinking guidelines are a tool for individuals but also for health practitioners, (like GPs and emergency department staff) to use these when discussing alcohol use with their patients.”
Alcohol industry lobbyists were exposed by RNZ requesting that information about the review of the New Zealand low-risk drinking guidelines and links to other countries’ guidelines be removed from the Health NZ website.
The alcohol industry has a track record of opposing effective health policies. As a recent Public Health Communication Centre briefing on the rising influence of big business in policy making states: “t he alcohol industry profits when they impede effective policies, while individuals, wh ānau / families and taxpayers bear the costs, which fall disproportionately on Māori and low-income communities.”
A recent poll shows the majority of New Zealanders agree the alcohol industry should have no place in developing alcohol policy.
“As the official New Zealand low-risk drinking guidelines are out of date, and a review of the guidelines has been paused, we thought we’d offer the New Zealand public the most recent, credible and evidence-based guidelines. People in Aotearoa New Zealand deserve to know the risks from alcohol, our nation’s most harmful drug .”
