Communicating Messages About Drinking

One arm of an alcohol misuse prevention strategy is the introduction of health warnings on alcohol products. Governments and across the world are responding to the World Health Organization's ‘call for action by to reduce the harmful use of alcohol’ (WHO, 2010). One example is the European Commission's response to the WHO call with a report regarding the mandatory labelling of the list of ingredients and the nutrition declaration of alcoholic beverages (EC, 2017). Notably, the report concluded that ‘the Commission has not identified objective grounds that would justify the absence of information on ingredients and nutrition information on alcoholic beverages.’ However, the report failed to address if warnings rather than ingredient and nutritional information are appropriate or beneficial for harm reduction.