Assessing Restrictiveness of National Alcohol Marketing Policies

AIMS: To develop an approach for monitoring national alcohol marketing policies globally, an area of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global Alcohol Strategy. METHODS: Data on restrictiveness of alcohol marketing policies came from the 2002 and 2008 WHO Global Surveys on Alcohol and Health. We included four scales in a sensitivity analysis to determine optimal weights to score countries on their marketing policies and applied the selected scale to assess national marketing policy restrictiveness. RESULTS: Nearly, 36% of countries had no marketing restrictions. The overall restrictiveness levels were not significantly different between 2002 and 2008. The number of countries with strict marketing regulations did not differ across years. CONCLUSION: This method of monitoring alcohol marketing restrictiveness helps track progress towards implementing WHO'S Global Alcohol Strategy. Findings indicate a consistent lack of restrictive policies over time, making this a priority area for national and global action.