Low-strength alcohol : study report on the patterns of low strength alcohol consumption

Alcohol, after tobacco, is the second most important cause of cancers, the second leading cause of death worldwide. WHO, in addition to calling on governments to strengthen implementation of high- impact cost-effective policy options to reduce the harm done by alcohol, calls on alcohol producers to "substitute, whenever possible, higher-alcohol products with no-alcohol and lower-alcohol products in their overall product portfolios". Consumers who newly purchase no-alcohol products partially substitute (at least to half in volume terms) purchases of higher strength products, resulting, overall, in less grams of alcohol bought and drunk; the population-level impact of such substitution is limited due to small overall volumes of purchase. Reformulation of existing, particularly high-volume sales, products to contain less alcohol can have a much greater impact. The key to promoting substitution and reformulation is pricing policy. Equalization of taxes per gram of alcohol for all products, with taxes increasing as a mathematical product of alcoholic strength, steeper at lower strengths, is the single most impactful policy to favour substitution and reformulation, such a tax itself reducing the harm done by alcohol. There are many carcinogenic administrative hurdles at country and European levels that need to be adjusted to implement effective tax policy and to promote substitution and reformulation.