Yoon and Lam BMC Public Health 2012, 12:717 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/717 price of alcohol is significantly associated with consump- tion behaviour, particularly among heavy and underage drinkers [5]. Countries that raise the price of alcohol through taxation find that consumption correspondingly decreases. A large body of literature has also demon- strated that there is a strong inverse relationship be- tween alcohol tax levels and alcohol-related harm and harmful drinking [6-9]. An analysis of the internal docu- ments of the global alcohol industry confirms that alco- hol taxes are one of the industry’s main concerns because tax increases lead to higher product prices and hence potentially reduce sales and profits [10,11]. There- fore, alcohol taxation is one of the most effective policy tools for controlling levels of alcohol consumption. Whereas alcohol taxes have become common practice in many countries as part of public health measures, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government lowered its duties on wine and beer by 50 percent in 2007, and in 2008 removed all duties on alco- hol except for spirits. Consequently, Hong Kong has be- come the only place in the world where there is neither a wine duty nor sales tax [12]. Recent announcements [13] by the alcohol industry indicate that they intend to seek tax exemption for spirits as well, while efforts to cultivate a “wine culture” and heavy alcohol advertising in Hong Kong indicate the massive growth envisaged by “market forces”. Today, by any measure, Hong Kong has relatively lower levels of alcohol consumption when compared with many other developed countries and regions. However, Hong Kong is seeing a rising trend in alcohol use, both in terms of the prevalence and drink- ing patterns. A recent government report shows that there was an increase of four percentage points in the prevalence of drinking among the adult population in Hong Kong from 30.9 percent in 2005 to 34.9 percent in 2010 [14]. The proportion of frequent binge drinkers (as reported drinking of at least 5 glasses/cans of alcohol beverages on one single occasion three times and more in the past month) increased from 35.0 percent in 2004 to 45.5 percent in 2011 [15,16]. The nature of public policy making in Hong Kong can be understood within a broad political context. As the novel concept of “one country-two systems” indicates, Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China. The political arrangement in Hong Kong is defined by its constitutional document namely the Basic Law of Hong Kong, and the power to amend the Law lies with the National People’s Congress in Beijing [17]. Under the Basic Law, almost half of the Legislative Council members are derived through functional constituencies that represent the major business, professional, and so- cial groups, and the other half are elected by universal suffrage. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, the head of the Hong Kong Government, is elected by an Election Page 2 of 12 Committee drawn mostly from the voters in the func- tional constituencies [18]. The constitutional constraints imposed by Beijing limit popular elections for the Legisla- tive Council, thereby giving rise to the dominance of politically conservative business elites on the political scene. As such, this contributes to a situation where a small number of interest groups clustered around the functional constituencies have disproportionate sway over the HKSAR’s political scene. As we will see in this paper, these factors also contribute to the direction of public policy making with a strong emphasis on eco- nomic neoliberalism while at the same time marginalis- ing the influence of the public’s interests. The aim of this paper is to provide a chronological account of the changes in Hong Kong’s policy on alco- hol taxation during the period from 2000 to 2008, with particular reference to the role of aggressive industry lobbying [19-21] as the main driving force behind the radical policy shifts (see Table 1). This paper begins with an account of major amendments to alcohol tax legislation in Hong Kong in 2000–2008. It then exam- ines how the alcohol industry sought to strategically advance its vested interests to lower and eventually eliminate the beer and wine duty in Hong Kong. It discusses the nature of the alcohol industry lobby in terms of the employment of new political tactics as well as the propagation of a blend of ideas related to alcohol and alcohol consumption. The paper concludes by raising some questions concerning Hong Kong’s al- cohol tax policy changes for future public health re- search and intervention. Methods The research for this paper was based on an analysis of primary documents. Official documents were retrieved from the Hong Kong Legislative Council and other gov- ernment departments concerned for the period from 2000 to 2008. All government documents were available in Chinese and English bilingual versions. Key search terms such as “alcohol tax”, “wine hub”, “budget”, and “alcohol industry” were used and relevant threads con- tained in the documents were followed to search for ad- ditional documents of interest. The documents included budget speeches, annual statistics on alcohol consump- tion, consultation papers, customs data, press releases, population surveys, and transcriptions of Legislative Council meetings regarding the issue of alcohol taxation. These documents were reviewed to examine the chrono- logical changes in the alcohol tax policy of the Hong Kong Government. A literature search was conducted on a variety of alcohol-related industry websites, especially those based in Hong Kong. We began with broad search terms such as “alcohol tax”, and “wine hub”, and then extended our