Controversy: Each Vietnamese person drinks 8.3 liters of alcohol/year

The Ministry of Health is releasing figures on alcohol consumption in Vietnam, saying they are alarming. The figures have sparked much controversy.

The draft Law on Prevention and Control of Harmful Effects of Alcohol, Beer and Other Alcoholic Beverages - drafted by the Ministry of Health - has been sent to the Ministry of Justice for review. The Ministry of Health is providing figures on the level of alcohol and beer consumption in Vietnam, saying that this is an alarming level. This figure has caused much controversy.

Baseless

According to the Ministry of Health, in terms of alcohol and beer consumption, if converted to liters of pure alcohol, on average a person over 15 years old in our country used 8.3 liters/year in 2016. According to the classification of the World Health Organization (WHO), Vietnam ranked 64/194 countries.

If we only count men over 15 years old who use alcohol and beer, on average each person consumed about 27.4 liters of pure alcohol in 2010. This consumption level is very high, ranking 2nd in Southeast Asia and the West Pacific, 10th in Asia and 29th in the world.

Regarding the harmful effects of alcohol and beer, the Ministry of Health stated: "Using alcohol and beer causes huge consequences for health, affects the sustainable development of families and has serious socio-economic consequences, which need to be promptly prevented."

In Vietnam, incomplete statistics show that alcohol and other alcoholic beverages were responsible for 2.9% of deaths and 2.2% of the national disease burden in 2008. In 2012, 8.3% of deaths nationwide were related to the use of alcohol and other alcoholic beverages. According to the Ministry of Health, alcohol consumption, regardless of how much or how little, is harmful to health.

If the economic cost of alcohol, beer and other alcoholic beverages in Vietnam is the lowest in the world (1.3% of GDP), the loss would be about 65,000 billion VND/year, more than 1.4 times the contribution to the state budget of the alcohol, beer and beverage production industry in Vietnam in 2017 (about 50,000 billion VND).

Faced with this figure, the Vietnam Beer, Alcohol and Beverage Association (VBA) said that there are many controversial points.

According to VBA, Vietnam's population in 2017 was about 96.5 million people. Of which, the number of people aged 15 and over accounted for 70%, or about 72.3 million people. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in 2017, the whole country consumed 4 billion liters of beer with an alcohol concentration of 5% and 310 million liters of various types of wine with an alcohol concentration of 35%, or 308,500,000 liters of pure alcohol. If divided equally by the total population, it is 3.2 liters/person/year, and divided by the number of people aged 15 and over, it is 4.26 liters/person/year.

The Ministry of Health cited: WHO Report data stated that the average consumption of Vietnamese men was up to 27.4 liters of pure alcohol in 2010. However, according to statistics, in 2010, Vietnam's population was about 87 million people, of which, men over 15 years old were about 28 million people. If each man consumed 27.4 liters of pure alcohol, the total amount of pure alcohol would be 675 million liters. Meanwhile, in 2010, beer production was 2.7 billion liters and wine was 350 million liters, if converted to pure alcohol, it would only be 9.2 liters.

VBA also questioned that this figure has not been updated with official data from the General Statistics Office and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. From there, VBA also proposed to review the damage caused by the use of alcohol, beer and other alcoholic beverages, which is up to 65,000 billion VND, 1.4 times higher than the industry's contribution to the state budget.

Feasibility concerns

Many experts are concerned about the feasibility of many points in the Law on Prevention and Control of Harmful Effects of Alcohol, Beer and Other Alcoholic Beverages. Especially the regulations on the distance between alcohol and beer selling points and the time frame for banning the sale of alcohol and beer.

Lawyer Truong Thanh Duc, Basico Law Firm, said that according to the Regulations, the radius between locations selling alcohol and beer and between locations selling alcohol and beer and locations where alcohol and beer are not allowed to be sold must not be less than 200 meters (except for streets specializing in culinary tourism). This regulation is even stricter than the Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harm. The Law on Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harm stipulates that cigarette selling points are limited to a distance of only 100 meters.

Economist Ngo Tri Long asked: On what scientific basis is the 200 meter radius between alcohol and beer business locations established and how will this regulation serve the goal of controlling beer and alcohol consumption?

Regulations that prohibit the sale of alcohol at certain times of the day can encourage irresponsible drinking or buying more before the ban period. Not only that, it also has a major impact on the hotel and tourism industry, especially in cities and localities where tourism is one of the key economic sectors.

Deputy Minister of Justice Tran Tien Dung, Chairman of the Law Project Appraisal Council, said that the feasibility of the Law Project is still doubtful, such as the Law does not provide solutions to control craft alcohol that affects the health of users; which agency will enforce these regulations?...

Commenting on this draft law, Mr. Nguyen Duc Kien, Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly's Economic Committee, commented, is the goal of the law to control drinkers or to control manufacturers? The data provided by the Ministry of Health as the basis for the argument in the draft law is very old, mainly from 2010 and before, with very little data from 2011 to present.