Attractive but Harmful Commodities: Looking Across Unhealthy Commodities to Improve Public Health Responses

Public health discussions now apply the label of 'unhealthy commodities' to items attractive to consumers but which bring harm to health and welfare. The list includes tobacco, alcohol, cannabis and other drugs, sugar-sweetened beverages, overprocessed foods and commercial gambling. The histories of markets and controls in such commodities vary, with commerce in alcohol, drugs and gambling prohibited in many places at times during the last two centuries, but few limits on sugar, or on tobacco until recent years. In the current world, regimes vary for retail sale between commodities and in different jurisdictions. Some examples are given of successful control measures which might be more widely applied: measures such as licensing of retail sales; closing off web-based sales; and imposing minimum unit pricing. The new thinking in public health offers the opportunity to look across what have been separate fields of action and experience and to learn from case study examples of effective mechanisms to reduce rates of harmful consequences from unhealthy commodities.