On March 10th, a number of global experts joined the Irish Community Action on Alcohol Network in launching a new initiative designed to challenge and resist the growing influence and impact that the alcohol industry is having on health and wellbeing. The I-Mark is a brand, a logo and a social movement which aims to build solidarity and visibility across the community, voluntary and charity sectors in Ireland in regard to non-collaboration with the alcohol industry. Speaking ahead of the launch, Paula Leonard from Alcohol Forum Ireland highlighted how the initiative was developed in response to concerns across communities in Ireland: 

“Five years ago, when we formed the Irish Community Action on Alcohol Network (ICAAN), we were very concerned about the activities of the alcohol industry and alcohol industry funded organisations in attempting to influence health policy.  They have no expertise in delivering programmes to our children in schools, but they are good at promoting their brand names so that our children and their parents form a good impression of them.  They have no expertise in distributing health information about alcohol, but they do have good reasons to minimize the harms from their products.  And they have no expertise in promoting research on alcohol, but their funding of scientists does create a conflict of interest that interferes with the development of unbiased science. What they are good at is finding ways to interfere with effective alcohol policies that will reduce the excessive amounts of drinking by our youth and adults.In those early years we struggled; focusing on the power, the resources and influence of the industry. But over the last year, we committed to building a movement to challenge the industry influence and we are so proud to be launching the ‘I-Mark: Supporting Independence from Alcohol Industry Influence’ on March 10th’.    

ICAAN is part of a growing global movement that is working to reduce the influence of the alcohol industry on health and the I-Mark has gained a lot of attention globally, even before it officially launches on March 10th.  It was presented at the first World Assembly on Community Action on Alcohol in Jan and ICAAN have since had several approaches from organisations in other countries, exploring how they might adopt and roll out this initiative.      ICAAN have also been invited to present on this work at the European Alcohol Policy Conference in Norway later in the year..... 

[See also, i-Mark the movie, on YouTube [6.24 video]]