Were Lithuanian anti-wine policies effective in 2017-2018?

Since the 1st of January, 2018 Lithuanian is living in a new age of alcohol laws that have banned the advertising of wine and other alcoholic beverages, have constricted alcohol availability and have banned sales of alcohol for people who are under 20 years old. Let’s run over the effectiveness of such policies.

Who knows the changes of the Law best

First of all, let’s see how does the NTAKD (Drug, tobacco and alcohol control department, that is responsible for the implementation of the law) interpret the changes of the Law of Control of Alcohol of Republic of Lithuania.

Remember that in June 2017 the Parliament (Seimas) of Lithuania voted enthusiastically for the changes of the Law of Control of Alcohol employing the slogan — “Let’s reduce the accessibility of alcohol!” To achieve that the following changes in the Law were implemented:

• The advertising of alcohol was banned;
• The legal drinking age was raised to 20 years;
• The retail time of alcohol was shortened: from 10 am to 8 pm Monday through Saturday, from 10 am to 3 pm on Sunday;
• The retail of alcohol in street cafes and beaches was restricted.

No post-legislative acts were enacted afterwards. The implementation of these policies fell on the shoulders of the Departament of control of drugs, tobacco and alcohol (NTAKD) which has no rights to consult yet has been able to publish recommendations based on how it has understood the new laws.

Overlooking the complete ban on alcohol advertising, the same department declared that together with the legal mandatory information of alcoholic beverages (e.g. brand, beverage group, origin, price, label and other information) it would deem lawful the following:

• Objective information regarding the taste of the beverage in food service establishment menus;
• Objective beverage and food recommendations in menus of food service establishments;
• Brand logos on umbrellas, ash trays, blankets and etc. in street cafes;
• Brand logos on bottle openers, stoppers, bottle packaging, glasses in beverage retail locations and food service establishments.

However, the department banned the following:

• The retail of branded clothing and accessories;
• The advertising of beverages on social media platforms (i.e. Facebook) as the pages of businesses on these platforms were not classified as business webpages and would consequently be labelled as retail locations;
• The distribution of information regarding alcoholic beverages by employees of businesses trading in such products. The department threatened to call such actions a form of advertising which, as we know, is illegal.

The department also started implementing economic sanctions (fines) for breaking these laws just 12 months after they were introduced. The fines are rare but rather large. Most of them are given for insignificant violations, e.g. pictures of logos on Facebook or hardly distinguishable labels of beverages. The table above represents all violations and their details (the lines in red represent cases where the fined organizations appealed and are still waiting for the ruling).

At the same time the public sphere has been flooded with advertisements of alcohol-free beverages. Non-alcoholic wine makes up only 0.5% of the amount of the same type of beverage sold (e.g. wine) whereas beer and cocktails make up 2.5%. Are their manufacturers hoping to raise that amount to 100% with such massive investments? Are loopholes found in the laws tailored to some players and to some beverage types?

The NTAKD (the Departament of control of drugs, tobacco and alcohol) helpfully shares its opinion with anyone whether an upcoming article, post, ad can lead to a fine. Most often the answer is that the information or the logo or the website address does not comply with article no. 29 of the Law of Control of Alcohol regarding the ban on advertising alcoholic beverages. That was the case with the ad campaign for the wine exhibition “Vyno dienos 2019”. The company in charge of this campaign (“JCDecaux”) was advised by the NTAKD to remove addresses of websites: www.vynodienos.lt and www.wineinmoderation.eu from their displays because these websites were found to contain logos of business that sell alcoholic beverages, information on moderate wine consumption and health as well as logos of “Vyno klubas“, “Vynoteka“ and “Kempinski Atelier Wine Boutique and Tasting Bar“. Thus, aware of the fines and other risks many info channels chose to decline their services and follow the orders of the NTAKD. 

The consequences of these bans

The previously described decisions of the NTAKD are related to controlling businesses. Thus the department regulates ways alcohol and information about it reach the consumer. Aware that our parliament passed these laws to reduce alcohol consumption and minimize the harm it does to health, society and the economy let’s explore how consumption changed after the laws were passed.

The only widely publicized result in 2019 was the decrease in consumption of ethyl alcohol per capita. The number fell from 12.3 litres in 2017 to 11.2 litres in 2018. However, if we analyzed the longterm trends of consumption, we would see that the number had been falling even before the laws were implemented. For example, in 2016 (when no laws were introduced) alcohol consumption fell by 6%. We might not know if this trend would have increased over time on its own. If we rephrased the slogan of the website of the NTAKD — “over time people became more aware, businesses became more socially responsible and society got healthier”.

In 2017 alcohol consumption fell by only 1% (to 7% in total) in spite of the significant increase in the excise tax for alcohol. Excise for wine doubled. Unfortunately, the effect was minimal. It’s understandable though because an increase in excise tax affects only the cheapest products in each category. Indeed, the cheapest wine, fortified wine and strong beer became more expensive by the amount of the excise tax and forced consumers to change their drinking habits or to switch to other alcoholic beverages. Consumers of more expensive beverages now spend the same amount but consume drinks of lesser quality than before. Due to the ban on advertising, informing and educating, a large part of passive consumers do not know how to differentiate the quality of drinks, thus they end up making their decisions based on price.

In 2018 sales of alcohol fell by 9%. We have to keep in mind that around 62 000 young people (between the ages of 18 and 20) who amount to 2.61% of all eligible consumers of alcohol were removed from the market. Thus the overall 2% decrease of consumption over the year does not even count due to the demographic shift. Why then, we should ask, was it necessary to implement these bans and regulations if they did not affect overall consumption?

Maybe these decisions backfired? Why was there a hike in DUI accidents by 3% (to 347) in 2018? What about the death toll of DUI accidents that grew 37% (from 46 in 2017 to 63 in 2018)? We can suppose that the behavior of drivers changed because of the change in the beverages they switched to. Because of the bans and the increased excise tax people are buying different kinds of alcohol. The sales of wine have, unfortunately, decreased. In 2016 they made a sixth (16.7%) of all alcohol sold. In 2018 this number fell to an eight (12.5 %) of all alcoholic beverage sales. In contrast, the sales of hard liquors grew from 38.6% to 42.6% in the same period (data courtesy of the department of statistics of Lithuania).

A question arises: did the government focus on fighting the wrong drinks and the wrong consumers? A study conducted by Vilnius University has revealed that 4% of the population in Lithuania could be labelled as chronic drinkers. As the study further notes the 4% consume 26% of all alcohol annually. Their choice of beverage is either strong beer or inexpensive fortified wine (97% of this beverage is drunk by chronic drinkers). Vodka sold in yogurt cups was only banned at the end of 2018 whereas strong beer can be purchased in all packaging sizes even today.

Hence, when studying the data provided by the statistics department that shows that the imports of wine fell by 7% in 2018 whereas the imports of hard liquors grew to 10.8%, one can worry that the situation in Lithuania is getting worse. Having acknowledged all this it seems that these laws were a big mistake and should be reversed.

Translated by Kasparas Adomaitis