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Since the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, access to alcohol has been expanded in the form of home delivery to reduce COVID-19 exposures and subsequently to-go cocktails small businesses stay afloat. But according to CUNY SPH Assistant Professor Sean Haley, chair of APHA’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Section, such changes to alcohol regulations have serious short- and long- term public health and safety consequences for communities already disproportionately burdened by the pandemic.
Even before COVID-19, research confirmed an overall significant net increase in alcohol consumption in the U.S. of approximately three percent per decade. Increases were greatest among women, Black persons, and those older than 50 between the years 2000 and 2016. Excessive alcohol consumption contributes to preventable illness such as liver disease and death.
In an editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health, Haley and colleagues outline a three-step call to action to reduce U.S. population-level alcohol-related harms. The authors recommend that state and local lawmakers assess the extent of likely alcohol-related harms; curtail alcohol advertising, limit availability, and increase the price of alcoholic beverages; and strengthen prevention capacity to reduce alcohol misuse and assess policy effectiveness.
Haley’s research focuses on population level policies related to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs that prevent or reduce population level harms.
“Strategies focused on individuals are rarely as effective as those focused on populations,” Haley explains. “Tobacco, for example, was a known health hazard for many years, but rates of smoking across the population remained high despite consistent implementation of individually focused interventions. It was not until the implementation of population level measures, such as prohibiting smoking in indoor public spaces, advertising restrictions, and increasing tobacco taxes, that tobacco use decreased, and health indicators improved.”
Haley recently initiated and facilitated a national working group of 30+ organizations to develop a statement outlining values and recommendations intended to address systemic racism in the enforcement of commercial tobacco control. Amidst protests and rising calls for social justice across the country, the working group sought to address state and local enforcement practices related to the purchase, possession, sale, and distribution of commercial tobacco products. The intent of the document is to reassert public health’s role in the three core public health functions (assessment, policy development, assurance) and to ensure public health’s reliance upon police enforcement are reserved for those rare instances when the populations’ health is under immediate threat. In keeping, local and state tobacco prevention and control partners must identify effective alternatives to the use of police officers to enforce tobacco control laws and regulations.
