Vested Interests in Addiction Research and Policy
Poisonous partnerships: health sector buy‐in to arrangements with government and addictive consumption industries

Abstract

In contexts where key parts of the government sector are conflicted over their public health responsibilities, health sector engagement in partnership arrangements entails too many risks.

Alcohol industry involvement in science: A systematic review of the perspectives of the alcohol research community

“…It is quite possible that we will have missed data that should have been included, partly given the nature of the data being sought. We have also only included material which clearly presents data on the alcohol industry and science, not together with data on other industries or other domains 175. Readers may assess the appropriateness of the analytic procedures and the trustworthiness of the resulting manifest themes directly.…”

How do Vested Interests Maintain Outdated Policy? The Case of Food Marketing to New Zealand Children

“…Machiavelli is often quoted as observing that the shaping of policy outcomes by vested interests is not a new phenomena [69], nor is it restricted to food and obesity issues in the twenty first century [9]. However, in the twenty first century it is increasingly unacceptable for powerful lobby groups to use reductionist tactics to frame global disease epidemics as personal choice issues in single countries [3,9,63,70].…”

“…From alcohol policy development, lessons can be learnt about the pros and cons of partnership approaches. Relationships between the alcohol industry and the health sector have been labelled 'poisonous partnerships' because of the power imbalance in favour of industry [9]. The role of government agencies working with industry also requires scrutiny as both groups derive benefit from consumption in the form of taxes or profit.…”

“…Public health nutrition experts take a different position, that children need protection from marketing activities [3][4][5][6]. Their views are based on psychology research showing children are not able to discriminate the persuasive intent of advertisements and that advertised foods are of poor nutritional quality On issues where public health interests are in conflict with commercial interests, such as tobacco, *Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, University of Otago, PO Box 913, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand; Tel: 643 479 8632; E-mail: robin.gauld@otago.ac.nz alcohol and food marketing to children, industry groups argue vigorously for self-regulatory policy with voluntary codes and complaint mechanisms [7][8][9]. Whilst these arguments often claim lower cost than government regulation and flexibility to adapt to new media, industry's underlying goal is self -determination.…”

“…The case study offers insights into the real world of policymaking and the influence of interest groups on decision-making. Lewis [20] and others [9,21,22] use the construct of 'vested interests' to explain how powerful groups influence health policy. To examine the role of key players we have allocated vested interest groups into three broad categories: government policy makers, nongovernmental groups (NGOs), and industry groups.…”