South Africa’s Rethink Your Drink campaign is taking a broad approach to alcohol harm, looking beyond individual drinking choices to the environments, policies and commercial practices that shape alcohol use. Developed by the DG Murray Trust (DGMT), the campaign aims to challenge the normalisation of heavy drinking while building public support for healthier communities and stronger alcohol policies.
The campaign starts from a striking contradiction. Fewer than one in three South Africans aged 15 and older consume alcohol, yet those who do drink tend to consume large amounts. According to figures highlighted by the campaign, South African drinkers consume an average of 33.5 grams of pure alcohol per day, compared with a global average of 27 grams. Heavy episodic drinking is an important part of this pattern, while the wider consequences are felt through health problems, violence, road crashes, lost productivity and pressure on families and communities.
Rethink Your Drink therefore argues that alcohol harm cannot be understood simply as a matter of personal responsibility. The campaign seeks to change the conditions that make heavy drinking easy, affordable and socially normal, particularly for young people and people living in under-resourced communities. This systemic perspective has also shaped its public engagement work. At the National Alcohol Summit, the campaign presented its immersive “First Home” exhibition, using art, history and lived experience to help visitors consider how alcohol marketing, availability and wider social conditions affect families and children.
Policy change is a central part of the campaign. Its priorities reflect five major areas promoted by the World Health Organization: stronger restrictions on alcohol advertising, higher alcohol prices through taxation and minimum unit pricing, a lower legal blood alcohol limit for driving, tighter controls on alcohol availability, and better access to treatment and counselling. Rethink Your Drink combines research, government engagement, support for civil society organisations, public communication and advocacy to build momentum for these reforms.
Ultimately, Rethink Your Drink is trying to shift the alcohol debate from one centred on individual choice towards one that also recognises collective responsibility and the influence of the wider environment. Its message is that safer communities are possible when public health is given greater weight in decisions about how alcohol is marketed, priced and sold. By combining policy advocacy with public awareness and community-level engagement, the campaign aims to make reducing heavy drinking part of a wider effort to improve wellbeing and tackle inequality in South Africa.
Find more from Rethink Your Drink (South Africa, October 2026)
