Ministry overrides Health NZ in alcohol guidelines review
By Gwen McClure of RNZ
Outdated alcohol guidelines put New Zealand out of step with modern research, but our health authorities are in no hurry to update them.
In Canada, proposed guidelines for low-risk drinking set the weekly limit at two drinks.
Here in New Zealand, the recommendation is to cap alcohol at 10 drinks weekly for women, and 15 for men, with two alcohol-free days per week.
Despite these guidelines being nearly 15 years old, and documents from Health NZ showing that they consider a review of the guidelines to be 'necessary', for now, the guidelines are staying as they are.
"The complication is that the Ministry of Health has come in over the top of [Health NZ] and has said 'actually these are our guidelines ... we want to control this and we're putting a pause on that work'," says RNZ's Guyon Espiner.
"It certainly does show that they're listening to the alcohol industry, who are pretty exercised about this - because as you can imagine, this could have a significant effect on sales if people did take this advice and did drink significantly less."
In a series of articles over the past few months, Espiner has reported on issues of alcohol harm and how the alcohol lobby has impacted policy in New Zealand.
Through documents he received through the Official Information Act (OIA), he found that Health NZ commissioned a review of the low-risk guidelines. But in October 2024, a lobbyist emailed Ross Bell, who is a manager in the Ministry of Health's Public Health Agency, asking why Health NZ's website said the guidelines were under review.
In December, following a second email which again asked about the review and also complained about mention of the Canadian guidelines on Health NZ-run website 'alcohol.org.nz', Bell emailed Health NZ saying "All work on this project will now pause. You will update relevant Health NZ websites to remove references to the review and also to other jurisdictions' guidelines (including the Canadian one)."
But in a statement, the Ministry of Health says it "understands Health New Zealand has continued some work related to the review. The Ministry is working with Health New Zealand on potential next steps, including how Health New Zealand's progress on the review to date can be used to inform any future work in this area" and that "the Ministry is currently considering where the next phase (Phase 2) will fit as it prioritises its work programme for 2025/26."
The Ministry's statement, which is attributed to Dr Andrew Old, Deputy Director-General, Public Health Agency, goes on to say that "as part of good policy process, the Ministry engages with a broad range of interested parties-including community organisations, public health experts, and the industry-to ensure any regulatory approaches are well-informed and transparent. Reference to the drinking guidelines review was removed from the alcohol.org.nz website to avoid confusion about roles and responsibilities as the guidelines are now led by the Ministry of Health - rather than Health New Zealand which has responsibility for the alcohol.org.nz site. This was an internal Ministry decision."
In today's episode of The Detail, Espiner details other examples of contact between the alcohol lobby and health policy makers.
"The material I've got shows that yes they've had a lot of meetings, a lot of email contact, in fact one looked like a regular meeting between alcohol lobbyists and Ministry of Health staff. They've also shared with the alcohol industry their plans on how they will combat Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder ... they shared that entire draft document with them and also shared with them plans about how they might spend the alcohol levy."
Espiner says that while this contact is going on, tobacco lobbyists are completely 'locked out of the policy process".
"We're signatory to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, [which is] a World Health initiative, and there's a clause in there that New Zealand is signed up to that says you won't allow the vested interests of the tobacco industry to shape policy.
"What's interesting is that the alcohol industry has escaped most of that scrutiny."
For Massey University associate professor Andy Towers, who has worked on the Health NZ review, it is a clear mistake for New Zealand to allow lobbyists a role.
"It's very, very clear that you don't invite the wolf into the henhouse," he says.
"Unfortunately the alcohol industry makes money based on alcohol use and resulting alcohol harms and in a space where we are trying to reduce the harmful use of alcohol and reduce those harms for society and for communities, there is not space for the alcohol industry there. They do not get to sit at the table, just as you wouldn't invite an arms manufacturer to the table to talk about cessation of violence."
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