Full title: Under the influence: 4. Election prospects triumph over public health.

Paper by Jonathan Gornall. Published in BMJ in January 2014.

Full title: Profits and pandemics: prevention of harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink industries

Authors: Prof Rob Moodie, David Stuckler, Carlos Monteiro, Nick Sheron, Bruce Neal, Thaksaphon Thamarangsi, Paul Lincoln, Sally Casswell, on behalf of The Lancet NCD Action Group

The 2011 UN high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) called for multisectoral action including with the private sector and industry. However, through the sale and promotion of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink (unhealthy commodities), transnational corporations are major drivers of global epidemics of NCDs. What role then should these industries have in NCD prevention and control? The study emphasises the rise in sales of these unhealthy commodities in low-income and middle-income countries, and consider the common strategies that the transnational corporations use to undermine NCD prevention and control.

Authors: Caitlin Hughes and Alex Stevens

Two observers and scholars of the 2001 Portuguese drug policy reform consider divergent accounts of the reform which viewed it as a ‘resounding success’ or a ‘disastrous failure’. Acknowledging from their own experience the inherent difficulties in studying drug law reform, Caitlin Hughes and Alex Stevens take the central competing claims of the protagonists and consider them against the available data.They remind us of the way all sides of the drug policy debates call upon and alternatively use or misuse ‘evidence’ to feed into discussions of the worth, efficacy and desirability of different illicit drug policies.In doing so they provide pause for thought for those of us who operate as drug policy researchers and drug policy advocates.

Authors: Martin Blachier, Henri Leleu, Markus Peck-Radosavljevic, Dominique-Charles Valla, Françoise Roudot-Thoraval

To survey the burden of liver disease in Europe and its causes 260 epidemiological studies published in the last five years were reviewed.

The incidence and prevalence of cirrhosis and primary liver cancer are key to understand the burden of liver disease. They represent the end-stage of liver pathology and thus are indicative of the associated mortality. About 0.1% of Hungarian males will die of cirrhosis every year compared with 0.001% of Greek females. WHO estimate that liver cancer is responsible for around 47,000 deaths per year in the EU.

Harmful alcohol consumption, viral hepatitis B and C and metabolic syndromes related to overweight and obesity are the leading causes of cirrhosis and primary liver cancer in Europe.

Author: WHO - Regional Office for Europe

People in the WHO European Region consume the most alcohol per head in the world. In the European Union (EU), alcohol accounts for about 120 000 premature deaths per year: 1 in 7 in men and 1 in 13 in women.

Most countries in the Region have adopted policies, strategies and plans to reduce alcohol-related harm. In 2012, the WHO Regional Office for Europe collected information on alcohol consumption and related harm, and countries policy responses to contribute to the Global Information System for Alcohol and Health; this report presented a selection of the results for 35 countries – EU Member States and candidate countries, Norway and Switzerland – individually and in groups distinguished by their drinking patterns and traditions.