Webinar: Big Alcohol Exposed Annual Report 2024

What the virtual event is about

The event will launch the Big Alcohol Exposed Annual Report 2024 to shine a light on how alcohol industry strategies of interference evolve and what their key tactics are.

 This virtual event aims to facilitate exchange among policy makers, civil society advocates and the research community about experiences and analysis of alcohol industry interference against proven alcohol policy solutions and how to overcome it.

The Big Alcohol Exposed Annual Report 2024 serves as both an exposé and a call to action. By documenting latest harmful strategies and presenting real-world examples the report is a wake-up call. The report reveals how alcohol companies are infiltrating trusted spaces “from sports to screens,” and how Big Alcohol is finding increasingly insidious ways to target young people and other vulnerable groups, manipulate public perception, and undermine health-focused policies.

 With this discussion, the event is a timely contribution towards the full implementation of the WHO Global Alcohol Action Plan and acceleration of national alcohol policy progress to promote people’s right to health and development.

The event provides insights, tools, and inspiration to expose, counter, and overcome Big Alcohol interference and advance lives saving alcohol policies.

Background

In May 2022, the World Health Assembly adopted the WHO Global Alcohol Action Plan. It signaled the global consensus that alcohol policy action is a public health priority.

Since 2022, countries around the world are taking action to protect their people from alcohol harms. And public surveys clearly show that people worldwide want their governments to implement evidence-based alcohol policy solutions.

But alcohol industry interference is a massive barrier to achieving the goals of the Global Alcohol Action Plan, to countries improving their alcohol policies, and to people and communities enjoying better health and well-being, with lower levels of alcohol harm.

From Uganda to Sweden, from Thailand to Brazil, the alcohol industry deploys harmful strategies to stop public health policy action, to promote their harmful products, to deceive the public about the harms of their products, to undermine existing laws and the functioning of public institutions, and to manipulate people.

To empower policy makers and alcohol policy advocates it is essential to monitor the dubious strategies of Big Alcohol and to expose them. Bringing the alcohol industry’s dark tactics into the light helps create accountability and drive alcohol policy action based on independent evidence, free from conflicts of interest, and in the interest of the people.

In this virtual event, we bring together country representatives, WHO experts, researchers, and community leaders to discuss cases of alcohol industry interference, best practices in overcoming such interference, and ways to protect alcohol policy making from corporate interference.

The Big Alcohol Exposed Annual Report 2024, titled “From Sports to Screens – Exposing Big Alcohol’s Predatory Practices,” shines a light on how the alcohol industry continues to prioritize profits over public health. Through deliberate, well-coordinated strategies, the industry embeds itself in spaces we trust—sports, digital platforms, and wellness culture – while actively undermining evidence-based policies that protect people’s health.