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Background and aims: Estimated alcohol consumption from national self‐report surveys is often only 30–40% of official estimates based on sales or taxation data. Global burden of disease (GBD) estimates for alcohol adjust survey estimates up to 80% of total per capita consumption. This assumes that cohort studies needed to estimate relative risks for disease suffer less from under‐reporting than typical national surveys. However, there is limited evidence on which to base that assumption. This paper aims to assess the extent of underestimation of alcohol consumption in cohort studies concerning alcohol and mortality compared with official total consumption estimates. Design Comparisons of estimated per capita consumption from a comprehensive sample of cohort studies against official estimates by country and year. Participants: A total of 1 876 046 participants in 40 cohort studies from 18 countries on alcohol use and all‐cause mortality identified by systematic review. Measurements Alcohol consumption data from the cohort studies were converted into usual grams of ethanol per day and then to total age 15+ per capita consumption. Matched estimates were sourced from the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Health Observatory. Findings The cohort studies had mean coverages of age 15+ per capita alcohol consumption of 61.71% (ranging from 29.19% for Russia to 96.53% for Japan), after weighting estimates by sample size for within‐country estimates and by number of studies per country for the overall estimate. Regional estimates were higher for the United States (66.22%) and lower for western European countries (55.35%). Conclusions: Underestimation of alcohol consumption in cohort studies is less than in typical population surveys. Because some under‐coverage is caused by under‐sampling heavier drinkers, the current practice of uplifting survey estimates to 80% of total population consumption in global burden of disease studies appears to be appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the marketing of alcohol to young people in the United Kingdom, but the lessons that emerge have international significance. Alcohol is a global enterprise and recent consolidation means that it is controlled by a decreasing number of expanding multi-nationals. Alcohol companies are able to allocate significant resources to researching consumer preferences, developing new products and promoting them on an international level. Recent years have seen a growth in the value that youth culture attaches to brand labels and symbols and a move away from the healthy-living ethos. The alcohol industry's response to these trends has been to design alcoholic beverages that appeal to young people, using well-informed and precisely targeted marketing strategies. This has led to growing concerns about the implications for public health and a demand for tighter controls to regulate alcohol marketing practices. In the United Kingdom, controls on alcohol are piecemeal and reactive and the current system of voluntary regulation appears ineffective. This paper argues for more research to establish current industry practice and inform the development of a comprehensive regulatory structure and system of monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim To estimate the prevalence of hazardous drinking and its socio-economic distribution among Russian men. Design Participants were an age-stratified, population-based random sample of men aged 25–54 years living in Izhevsk, a city in the Urals, Russia. Interviewers administered questionnaires to cohabiting proxy respondents about behavioural indicators of hazardous drinking derived from frequency of hangover, frequency of drinking beverage spirits, episodes in the last year of extended periods of drunkenness during which the participant withdraws from normal life (zapoi), consumption of alcoholic substances not intended to be drunk (surrogates) and socio-economic position. Logistic regression was used to examine associations between socio-economic position and indicators of hazardous drinking in the past year. Findings Of 1750 men, 79% drank spirits and 8% drank surrogates at least sometimes in the past year; 25% drank spirits and 4% drank surrogates at least weekly and 10% had had an episode of zapoi in the past year. After adjustment for other socio-economic factors, education was strongly associated with indicators of hazardous drinking. Men with the lowest level of education compared to the highest level of education had an odds ratio of surrogate drinking of 7.7 (95% CI 3.2–18.5), of zapoi of 5.2 (2.3–11.8) and of frequent hangover of 3.7 (1.8–7.4). These indicators of hazardous drinking were also independently strongly associated with being unemployed (versus employed) and with levels of household wealth/amenities. Associations of all these variables with daily consumption of beverage spirits were weaker. Conclusion Using a novel range of indicator variables of hazardous drinking, this paper shows that the prevalence of these behaviours is high among working-age men in this Russian city. Moreover, these hazardous behaviours show very clear socio-economic patterns, with particularly high prevalence among those who have had the least education and are not in employment. In contrast, more conventional measures of heavy drinking, based on frequency of consumption of beverage spirits, are less prevalent and show much weaker associations with socio-economic position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the paper "Prevalence and socio-economic distribution of hazardous patterns of alcohol drinking: study of alcohol consumption in men aged 25-54 years in Izhevsk, Russia" by S. Tomkins and colleagues. The paper examined the association between socio-economic status and drinking. Socio-economic factors examined were education, employment status and household amenity index.