THE PORTMAN GROUP AND THE AERC

Abstract

Thank you for inviting me to comment on the editorial in the October edition of Addiction. Edwards et al. (2004) are inaccurate and misleading in their reference to the complaint about FCUK spirit. Inaccurate because (a) The Portman Group Code does not cover advertising; it covers the naming, packaging and promotion of alcoholic drinks, and (b) adjudication of complaints is not carried out by The Portman Group but by the Independent Complaints Panel chaired by Lord Condon; The Portman Group's role is to act as secretariat of the Panel and to apply the sanctions of the Code in order to ensure that the Panel's decisions are enforced. The editorial was misleading because by quoting a line from the Panel's lengthy adjudication referring to one of the grounds on which they found it not to be in breach of the Code, it was implied that FCUK spirit was considered acceptable. In fact the Panel upheld the complaint against this product on the grounds that it appealed to under 18s, a decision based on evidence received that ‘the parent brand’, the fashion label FCUK, appealed more to 14–17 years olds than to any other age group. The company responsible for FCUK spirit, knowing that The Portman Group's enforcement mechanism, the Retailer Alert, would effectively ban the product, immediately withdrew it from the market. This case demonstrates how effective and efficient this system of self-regulation is; FCUK spirit is one of over 70 products which have to date been removed from the market because of the Code. If the Panel had upheld the complaint on the sloppy and more debatable taste and decency grounds associated with the product's name, rather than the factual evidence about its underage appeal, the decision could easily have been taken to judicial review, a long and expensive process during which the offending product would, of course, have remained on the market. As for the rest of the editorial rant, I will not feed the authors’ addiction to this rather sad historic vendetta by responding, except to state the blindingly obvious point that The Portman Group is not on the Board of the AERC, an individual called Jean Coussins is. There are other aspects of my 30 year career—in education, the voluntary sector and managing grant-aid and research programmes—which were presumably considered relevant to my appointment, as well as having run The Portman Group for the last eight years. Get over it.