Regulating Tobacco Alcohol And Unhealthy Foods

The need to reduce disability and premature deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is increasingly engaging international organisations and national and sub-national governments. In this book, experts from a range of backgrounds provide insights into the legal implications of regulating tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods, all of which are risk factors for NCDs. As individual countries and the international community move to increase targeting of these risk factors, affected industries are turning to national and international law to challenge the resulting regulations. This book explores how the effective regulation of tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods can be achieved within the context of international health law, international trade and investment law, international human rights law, international intellectual property law, and domestic laws on constitutional and other matters. Its contributors consider the various tensions that arise in regulating NCD risk factors, as well as offering an original analysis of the relationship between evidence and health regulation. Covering a range of geographical areas, including the Americas, the European Union, Africa and Oceania, the book offers lessons for health and policy practitioners and scholars in navigating the complex legal fields in which the regulation of tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods takes place.

Trade liberalisation has the potential to increase certain unhealthy habits such as smoking and over-consumption of alcohol and unhealthy foods, leading to a corresponding increase in non-communicable diseases ('NCDs'). A range of measures designed to reduce consumption of these products may implicate international trade rules. For example, NCD risk factors may be addressed through: product bans; packaging and labelling requirements; import tariffs; sales taxes; subsidies; licences; restrictions on advertising, promotion or sponsorship; regulation of product content through disclosure or restriction of ingredients; restrictions on ages of sale or purchase; exclusion areas (eg no smoking or no alcohol areas); and education. To a greater or lesser degree, each of these measures could potentially infringe international trade rules and therefore needs to be crafted with those rules in mind. A key aim of this chapter is therefore to provide insights for public health officials and policy-makers in countries around the world on how regulation of NCD risk factors can be optimised to accord with the requirements of international trade law without compromising public health objectives. Despite some problematic examples of recent clashes between international trade law and NCD risk factor regulation (particularly in connection with tobacco), we firmly believe as international trade law scholars that international trade law need not impede sound health policy.

This collection of essays looks at the role the European Union could and should play in promoting healthier lifestyle, in light of the moral, philosophical, legal and political challenges associated with the regulation of individual choices. By tackling the main non-communicable diseases (NCD) risk factors (tobacco consumption, harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity), the contributors endeavour to identify common themes and determine whether and, if so, to what extent the lessons learned in relation to each area of EU intervention could be transposed to the others. By focusing on the European Union legal order, the book highlights both the opportunities that legal instruments offer for NCD prevention and control agenda in Europe, as well as the constraints that the law imposes on policy-makers.

How the European Union could and should regulate lifestyle risks of non-communicable diseases through regulation of individual choices.

Regulatory Autonomy in International Economic Law provides the first extensive legal analysis of Australia’s trade and investment treaties in the context of their impact on national regulatory autonomy. This thought-provoking study offers compelling lessons for not only Australia but also countries around the globe in relation to pressing current problems, including the uncertain future of the World Trade Organization and widespread concerns about the legitimacy of investor–State dispute settlement.

Behavioural sciences help refine our understanding of human decision-making. Their insights are immensely relevant for policy-making since public intervention works much better when it targets real people rather than imaginary beings assumed to be perfectly rational. Increasingly, governments around the world are keen to rely on those insights for reshaping public interventions in a wide range of policy areas such as energy, health, financial services and data protection. When policy-making meets behavioural sciences, effective and low-cost regulations can emerge in the form of default rules, smart disclosure and simplification requirements. While behaviourally-informed intervention has a huge potential for policymaking, it also attracts legitimacy and practicability concerns. Nudge and the Law takes a European perspective on those issues and explores the legal implications of the emergent phenomenon of behavioural regulation by focusing on the challenges and opportunities it may offer to EU policy-making and beyond.

Risk and EU Law considers the multiple reasons for the increase in the types and diversity of risks, as well as the potential magnitude of their undesirable effects. The book identifies such reasons as; the openness of liberal societies; market competition; the constant endeavour to innovate; as well as globalization and the impact of new technologies. It also explores topics surrounding the social epistemology of risk observation and management, the role of science in political and judicial decision-making and transnational risk regulation and contractual governance.

The effect of Globalization on health has attracted the attention of scholars and policy makers across multiple disciplines. A key concern is the regulation of international health protection, and in particular the use of international health instruments and the complex interaction between international law and health considerations. For the first time, a group of law and policy scholars have analysed these issues, drawing on knowledge from their respective fields. The resulting book provides comprehensive coverage of contemporary issues in global health law and governance.

Intellectual property (IP) is a key component of the life sciences, one of the most dynamic and innovative fields of technology today. At the same time, the relationship between IP and the life sciences raises new public policy dilemmas. The Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and the Life Sciences comprises contributions by leading experts from academia and industry to provide in-depth analyses of key topics including pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and genes, plant innovations, stem cells, the role of competition law and access to medicines. The Research Handbook focuses on the relationship between IP and the life sciences in Europe and the United States, complemented by country-specific case studies on Australia, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Kenya, South Africa and Thailand to provide a truly international perspective.

Global health is a rapidly emerging discipline with a transformative potential for public policy and international development. Emphasizing transnational health issues, global health aims to improve health and achieve health equity for all people worldwide. Its multidisciplinary scope includes contributions from many disciplines within and beyond the health sciences, including clinical medicine, public health, social and behavioral sciences, environmental sciences, economics, public policy, law and ethics. This large reference offers up-to-date information and expertise across all aspects of global health and helps readers to achieve a truly multidisciplinary understanding of the topics, trends as well as the clinical, socioeconomic and environmental drivers impacting global health. As a fully comprehensive, state-of-the-art and continuously updated, living reference, the Handbook of Global Health is an important, dynamic resource to provide context for global health clinical care, organizational decision-making, and overall public policy on many levels. Health workers, physicians, economists, environmental and social scientists, trainees and medical students as well as professionals and practitioners will find this handbook of great value.