BackgroundPublic support for policies to reduce alcohol consumption and harms generally has an inverse association with policy effectiveness: policies with greatest evidence for effectiveness, such as pricing and availability, are often the least popular. Internationally, awareness of alcohol as a risk factor for cancer has been shown to be associated with higher levels of support for increased price, volumetric taxation, fewer alcohol outlets, banning sports sponsorship, guideline labelling, and health warning labels, suggesting that the acceptability of politically contentious public health policies might vary with understanding of relevant health risks. This study aimed to examine the association between awareness that alcohol can cause cancer and public support for policies relevant to current UK alcohol policy debates. MethodsAn online survey of 2100 adults was conducted in England in July, 2015, with population-representative quota sampling for age, sex, region, and education. Support for 21 alcohol policies in the domains of pricing, availability, drink-driving countermeasures, health services, industry responsibility, labelling, and advertising or marketing were assessed on a 5 point Likert scale (“strongly oppose” to “strongly support”). Logistic regression analyses tested whether sociodemographic characteristics (sex, age, region, education, income), alcohol use, tobacco use, and knowledge of the alcohol–cancer link were associated with support for six key policies previously investigated in Australia (ie, increased price, volumetric taxation, fewer outlets, banning sports sponsorship, guideline labelling, health warning labels). FindingsSupport was highest for displaying the number of alcohol units on labels and lowest for increasing alcohol prices (73·6% and 26·6%, respectively, endorsing “support” or “strongly support”). Level of alcohol use was inversely related to policy support. Previous international findings of a significant association between cancer knowledge and support for six alcohol policies were replicated in this sample, with the odds of respondents who were aware of the link between alcohol and cancer being supportive of policies (compared with those who were not aware) ranging from between 1·3 for compulsory guideline labelling and 1·7 for taxation according to alcohol by volume. InterpretationSupport for alcohol policies may be greater when health risks are understood. FundingPolicy Research Centre for Cancer Prevention, Cancer Research UK. The authors are solely responsible for the content of this paper.
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