Introduction: The rapid growth of digital media, notably social media, image and video sharing platforms, has created an opportunity for the alcohol industry to employ advanced strategies and alcohol marketing approaches to target key audiences and users. This presents a rising regulatory challenge for European countries, most of which have yet to adapt their restrictions accordingly. Purpose: To examine existing scientific and authoritative grey literature, assessing the alcohol industry’s adherence of digital alcohol marketing communication to contemporary statutory regulation and industry self-regulation, and to provide an overview of existing Slovenian alcohol advertising restrictions. Methods: We conducted a systematic search through three journal databases (WoS, PubMed, Scopus) along with a manual search of other authoritative sources. Studies were included in our review if they were published in English, after 2004, and assessed regulatory policy interventions enacted by an EU or non-EU governing body, nation’s governmental agency or private entity, and with the intent to restrict digital alcohol marketing. In addition, we conducted a manual search of grey literature and examined current Slovenian statutory and self-regulatory alcohol marketing restrictions. Results: A total of 4690 records were identified. After duplicate removal and full text assessment stages, 14 articles were examined in detail. Our findings indicate that alcohol marketing in digital media continues to be accessible by children and under-aged adolescents. Alcohol advertising content remains widespread on these platforms and increasingly innovative strategies are being applied to reach targeted audiences. Age-affirmation systems remain largely ineffective at preventing under-aged access. Current research also reveals cases of violations of marketing codes and self-regulations by the alcohol industry, and utilization of grey-area approaches to bypass existing regulations. Slovenia continues to abide by almost two decades old legislation and relies on an infrequent and inadequate monitoring and enforcement framework. Discussion and conclusion: There is a clear need for the development of statutory digital alcohol marketing restrictions in EU Member-States. Enacted regulation must be accompanied by proactive monitoring capacities and effective means of enforcement. Further research in also needed across European countries, including Slovenia, which would assess the effectiveness of existing regulatory frameworks of digital alcohol marketing practices on social media, websites and image and video sharing platforms.
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