Table 4 Eighteen research questions to better understand the effects of policy change. Initial ideas of research questions came from participants’ answers to our survey question “To better inform a coordinated policy strategy on tobacco and alcohol use, future collaborative research should...”. The questions in this table result from our analysis of data from our survey and workshop

Price

 1. Do price policies on tobacco and alcohol have regressive effects, what are the ethics of this issue and how could these effects be mitigated?

 2. How are price and behaviour across tobacco and alcohol purchase linked differently for youth and adult populations?

 3. How do the tobacco and alcohol industries differentiate products in the marketplace and how does this relate to the cross-price elasticity of demand for different products?

 4. How does demand for illicit drugs respond to tobacco and alcohol price rises?

Place

 5. How can policies be better tailored to the needs of local populations, e.g. to urban vs. rural settings?

 6. What are the advantages and challenges of introducing licenses to sell tobacco and of linking them to licenses to sell alcohol?

Promotion

 7. How are people’s perceptions of product harm affected by independent vs. industry-led health promotion messages?

 8. Would campaigns that combined health promotion messages across tobacco and alcohol produce stronger or weaker messages than focused substance-specific campaigns (e.g. alcohol: ‘Year of liver disease’; tobacco: ‘Stoptober’)?

 9. How can campaigns for tobacco be effectively transferred to alcohol e.g. the US tobacco ‘Truth’ campaign [23] to expose and counter industry tactics in marketing and information management?

Person

 10. How can health professionals identify people who smoke and drink to harmful levels, and how can these people be supported in a feasible and cost-effective way?

 11. How can support to reduce smoking and drinking be made more accessible to people with mental health issues?

 12. How can community groups be helped to widen access to support to reduce smoking and drinking outside of the health service?

Prescriptive

 13. What might be the health, societal and economic impacts of bringing marketing regulations for alcohol into alignment with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control?

 14. How do the tobacco and alcohol industries use online marketing to circumvent regulations on advertising and how can regulation and policing be more effective?

Industry regulation

 15. How can restrictions on industry corporate political activity be implemented effectively given:

  a) jurisdictional limitations over transnational companies?

  b) uncertainty regarding at which sector of industry measures should be targeted (e.g. producers, importers, retailers)?

  c) industry adaptation (e.g. third party lobbying, or gifts and hospitality to policymakers)?

 16. What are the marketing strategies employed to maintain consumer demand following new policies e.g. regulations on packaging or changes to tax?

 17. How do the tobacco and alcohol industries deflect responsibility for the harms of consumption from themselves to individual consumers?

 18. What is the potential for government to gain revenue from industry levies and use this to fund services to support people to reduce their consumption, or to pay for costs of consumption to society?