Academic-industry partnerships in alcohol and gambling: A continuum of benefits and harms

There are many reasons why collaboration between academic institutions and private industry should be encouraged. At the same time, such collaborations raise the potential for profound conflicts of interest. Furthermore, there may be different kinds of issues in different kinds of industry, as is reflected in the metaphors we employ to think about them. The pharmaceutical industry is at times viewed as a “good” industry that can go wrong, while the tobacco industry is analogously viewed as a “bad” industry that can do little right. The alcohol and gambling industries may be particularly useful to think through insofar as they arguably require a continuum of benefits and harms to be acknowledged. I consider a number of initiatives by the alcohol and gambling industry in South Africa, and argue that there are real opportunities for delineating and developing more robust models of academic-industry collaboration, which ensure that public health is maximized in that country and elsewhere.