Schools Must Not Receive Funds And Promotions From Breweries — Prof Dr Rafidah Hanim Mokhtar

Every sensible citizen of Malaysia should rally behind the position affirmed by Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek in ruling out any exemptions or reviewing the guidelines forbidding schools from receiving funds generated from the sale of tobacco products and alcoholic beverages. The ministry guideline was introduced on March 29, 2018.

The minister was responding to the issue of Chinese vernacular schools receiving donations which involved breweries.

It is globally acknowledged that any presumed benefit connected to the production, sale, and use of alcohol comes at an enormous cost to society.

Alcohol is not an ordinary commodity. It causes medical, psychological, and social harm by the mechanisms of physical toxicity, intoxication, and dependence.

Secondly, considering that the alcohol and tobacco industries have been concentrating on Asian and African markets as their business dwindles in Western countries, it would be prudent to pre-emptively create a national alcohol policy which recognises these harmful features, and a comprehensive system to regulate its use.

Previous studies on the tobacco and beverage industries have shown that these industry-funded education programmes often put peer pressure and parental influence as the main drivers of children and young people’s choices and behaviours.

They naturally downplay other influences such as corporate marketing strategies, including masquerading as corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.

The government, Members of Parliament, and policymakers must take heed of the subtle ways corporate-sponsored programmes and resources have been promoting ideas and descriptions about public health issues like youth smoking and drinking.

These are normally done by emphasising individual responsibility above all else and placing the blame for harm almost exclusively on young people and their parents.

They may even sponsor rehabilitation programmes, and these CSR initiatives by breweries and cigarette companies obscure the role of the industries themselves in causing harm.

Naturally, their programmes will never mention government policies, such as tax or price-based interventions, marketing restrictions, and the mandating of product warnings, that are known to be effective in protecting people from harm.

Discussion of the responsibility of businesses to act ethically and to protect the public from the potential harms caused by their products will be a strict no-no.

The alcohol menace should not be viewed as a ‘Muslim issue’ as it is normally done in Malaysia. Malaysian Muslims are obviously not the only ones in the world who recognise the harmful effects of alcohol.

This is a global problem, as evidenced by numerous worldwide efforts such as the Minimal Unit Pricing (MUP) in Scotland, the 2005 protests by Buddhist monks in Thailand over the proposed public listing of Thai Beverages Ltd on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), Australia’s National Alcohol Strategy 2019-2028, and many more. 

In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that alcohol contributed to more than 200 diseases and injury-related health conditions, including liver diseases, road injuries, violence, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, suicides, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.

In 2023, WHO published a statement in The Lancet: “When it comes to alcohol consumption, there is no safe amount that does not affect health”.

Breweries may shower our schools with generous donations and physical infrastructures, but they do it with well-calculated returns on investments in mind.

Normalising alcohol as just normal beverages to youths is a form of recruitment. Think of families destroyed by alcohol dependence, breadwinners killed by drunk drivers, and the burden on our health services. Can these costs and their far-reaching consequences be quantified reliably? 

In Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), it is explicitly stated that we must recognise the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health.

The recognition of this right establishes the obligation for states and parties to take necessary measures to develop and implement an effective system of health care for all children.

This is expressed in the obligation of states and parties to strive to ensure that no child is deprived of her or his right to access health care services and to achieve the full realisation of the right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health.

This is in line with the position taken by our Education Ministry. 

Prof Dr Rafidah Hanim Mokhtar is from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia. She is also the co-chairman of the Malaysian Alliance of Civil Society Organisations in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Process (MACSA) 

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