NL EN
DONEER NU!

Dutch Ministry of Health just started the 'Dranquilo' campaign

11 December 2020

For the first time since the 1990s, the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport will again conduct an alcohol campaign. Now not 'Alcohol destroys more than you would like' (the former campaign), but 'Dranquilo'. That term comes from the Spanish word 'tranquilo', which means 'take it easy’ and the Dutch word ‘drank’, which means booze. If you do not drink alcohol - for shorter or longer - you can indicate this by saying: 'I am dranquilo' or 'Tonight I am doing a nice dranquilo'.

According to State Secretary Paul Blokhuis, the campaign is not intended to point the finger, but to make people more aware. After all, it has been agreed in the National Prevention Agreement that awareness of the use as well as knowledge of the effects of alcohol must be increased and that the percentage of excessive and heavy drinkers must be reduced.

Dranquilo will last several years and will start in the run-up to 'Dry January / Ik Pas', the campaign to stop drinking alcohol for a month. Online videos will be posted on social media, there will be posters on billboards and from February there will also be commercials on television.

Wim van Dalen, director of the Dutch Institute for Alcohol Policy STAP, is critical. "The press release from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport states that the parties participating in the National Prevention Agreement are involved in the development of the campaign. That is correct. But that does not mean that they were all happy with it. For example, STAP has emphatically stated that the campaign too much assumes that the use of alcohol is a normal accepted behavior. Anyone who doesn't drink for a while and shouts 'dranquilo' is portrayed as deviating from normal behavior."

Van Dalen: "It is also very clearly promoting non-alcoholic beer, while the promotion of non-alcoholic beer can have a stimulating effect for young people to drink alcoholic beer. The campaign does not show the benefits of drinking less or not. The Ministry should invest more in increasing knowledge about the risks of alcohol consumption”.

Source first 3 paragraphs: rijksoverheid.nl

Commercials can be seen here (in Dutch).

News

Dutch Institute for Alcohol Policy STAP
P.O. Box 9769
3506 GT Utrecht
The Netherlands
T: +31 (0)30-6565041
F: +31 (0)30-6565043
E: info@stap.nl