Our new Addiction Economy project is now live!
How are cigarette companies still allowed to exist…?
They have no benefit to society and are the biggest causes of mass death the world has ever seen and yet…. here they are still. How on earth is that allowed to happen?
This is the thorny question which inspired our new initiative The Addiction Economy, which aims to understand what political and social systems are failing when harmful industries flourish - and what to do about it.
For more see our new micro-site: TheAddictionEconomy.com
…Addiction is defined as ‘not having control over doing, taking or using something to the point where it could be harmful to you’. (UK NHS definition).
The Addiction Economy is the term we use to describe those companies whose business models knowingly and unashamedly erode our ability to control our usage of their products beyond the point at which it harms us.
Our work puts 8 sectors under the microscope - cigarettes, vapes, alcohol, opioids, unhealthy and ultra-processed foods, gambling, social media and computer games - exposing the commercial, political, academic and social values and decision-making through which their profits are allowed to soar, whilst in plain sight they decimate the mental and physical health of billions of people.
Our aims with this initiative are:
To understand how corporations contribute to addiction and catalogue the drivers of an Economic Model.
To understand other models which describe factors which contribute to addiction and explore how they are influenced by the Economic Model.
To produce an easy to understand framework to form the basis of our stakeholder engagement about the Addiction Economy and its impact on prevention and and un-addiction.
To inspire others to use the framework and its language to create a more empathetic, inclusive, interconnected approach to action on addiction prevention and un-addiction.
The next step will be to engage with with citizens, particularly young people, politicians, regulators, civil society groups, academics and healthcare professionals to explore with them how these perspectives on addiction could be useful for prevention and un-addiction.