Gambling, obesity, alcohol: Is it time for industries to pay for impact of their goods on health?
People with problem gambling spend on average more than €1,000 per month on gambling. Online gambling accounts for three-fifths of the total gambling spend of people with problem gambling, with in-person gambling accounting for the rest. File picture
Ahead of Budget 2024, is it time to consider how vastly profitable global corporations can be obliged to adopt a ‘polluter pays’ model that addresses the impact of their industry on health?
New figures from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) indicate that there is far more problem gambling in Ireland than previously believed.
Given that the problem is hard to measure and often hidden, this new research used a range of approaches to get an honest and accurate picture of the reality. The research estimates that one in 30 adults in Ireland suffers from problem gambling: 10 times higher than previous estimates from 2019.
"This equates to 130,000 adults with problem gambling in Ireland and suggests that the problem is much more widespread than we thought," said Professor Pete Lunn, Head of the ESRI’s Behavioural Research Unit.
People with problem gambling spend on average more than €1,000 per month on gambling. Online gambling accounts for three-fifths of the total gambling spend of people with problem gambling, with in-person gambling accounting for the rest.
Added to that, more than a quarter of a million (279,000) adults show moderate evidence of problem gambling — which means that they suffer several negative experiences associated with their gambling, including borrowing to fund their addiction.
And it’s not just adults. A new report from the European School Survey on Alcohol and Drugs in September found that almost a quarter of 16-year-olds in Ireland gambled for money in the previous year.
Of those, over half (59.7%) were boys, a fifth (21.3%) were having difficulty with controlling their gambling, a fifth (19%) reported the need to bet more and more money, and almost one in 12 (8.1%) reported lying to important people about how much money they gambled.
Commenting on the findings, the Director of Policy at the Institute of Public Health, Dr Helen McAvoy said:
"Gambling rates among this age group in Ireland are around the European average, highlighting the need for a public health approach to reduce gambling harms."
Head of Addiction Services at St John of God Hospital in Dublin, Professor Colin O’Gara, recently called for a levy on the gambling industry that accounts for the harm of that industry by costing it and making the industry pay accordingly.
While mounting research has linked ultra-processed foods (UPF) such as fizzy drinks, ice cream, and ready meals to increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and weight gain, global consumption continues to climb.
Today in Ireland, about a fifth of children are overweight with 5% living with obesity. These figures are skewed by income groups, with a doubling of the risk of obesity for children in disadvantaged primary schools (8.2%) compared to other schools (4%).
Henry Dimbleby in , is very clear.
"We are fat because we live in a world full of food that makes us fat and ill. Our biology is completely unsuited to the obesogenic environment we have built for ourselves," he writes.
In the UK National Food Strategy (2021), Dimbleby recommended a tax on the salt and sugar used in processed food.
The point of the tax was to make food companies change their recipes, rather than raising prices and would only apply to sugar and salt bought for bulk for food processing, not the stuff sold in shops. This would shift the onus on manufacturers to reformulate rather than an additional price hike on consumers.
The Commission on Taxation and Welfare this year recommended fiscal measures to reduce the consumption of highly processed foods and promote healthier eating. A tax on highly processed food, high in sugar would incentivise reformulation, reduce consumption and have a positive impact on health.
Every day in Ireland, four people die from alcohol-related illness while hundreds of thousands of families are severely impacted by alcohol harm. The OECD estimate that the economic impact of this harm amounts to billions of euros and 1.9% of GDP. Meanwhile, global alcohol producers make billions in profits.
Alcohol Action Ireland (AAI) CEO Dr Sheila Gilheany states that alcohol places such a heavy burden on public finance and spending, it is vital that the Government uses all the policy measures at its disposal and employs a ‘polluter pays’ approach to raise the funding necessary to ameliorate alcohol-induced harm.
Alcohol excise duties have not been increased in a decade and their value has now been eroded by inflation. As opposed to Drink Ireland’s suggestion of a 15% decrease in excise duties, AAI has called for a 15% increase to restore the value to 2014 levels.
Additionally, AAI suggests a ring-fenced social responsibility levy similar to plans for the gambling industry. For example, a levy of 1% on sales in the on-trade and 2% in the off-trade would raise about €100m a year and could be revised annually in line with the level of harm to the State.
A 15% increase in excise duty on alcohol combined with a ring-fenced social responsibility levy would go a long way towards addressing the burden that alcohol places on Irish society.
To put this in perspective, Ireland’s most popular beer is made by Diageo, whose global operating profits grew by 5.1% to €5.3bn last year. At the same time in 2022, alcohol cost the State at least €3.7bn yet excise duties raised only €1.2bn.
Grant Ennis in explores how global corporations frame discussions on their products in a way that distracts from the evidence of the impact of their product on health.
"They take enormously profitable, global problems and say ‘they aren’t there, that they are good, or that they are natural, normal and nothing to worry about."
Like gambling, eating, and drinking for pleasure while the monumental impacts on physical and mental health are discounted or ignored.
Obesity, chronic illness, a cost-of-living crisis, lack of housing, plummeting mental health, and inadequate access to healthcare: if there was a single word to describe 2023 it would probably be permacrisis.
Isn’t it time that budgetary and economic policy was underpinned by key indicators of health, rather than blindly pursuing policies that impact the health and wellbeing of all our citizens and widens the health gap between well-off and low-income groups?
Isn’t it time that a ‘polluter pays’ model underpinned all global corporations so that the impact on health of monumentally profitable consumer goods was addressed?
- Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor in Cork and former director of human health and nutrition, safefood
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