Target 3.5: Prevent and treat substance abuse
Strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Alcohol caused 2.6 million deaths in 2019, and WHO reports continued industry interference in policy development. The National Academies document the alcohol industry lobbying against tax increases and lower blood-alcohol limits. They also document the industry sponsoring drink-driving programs, 97.9 percent of which were ineffective or of unknown effectiveness. On prescription narcotics, owner action has already changed conduct. The Investors for Opioid Accountability coalition engaged 20 manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies and won seven majority votes. It secured board opioid committees at Cardinal Health and Assertio, misconduct clawbacks at ten companies and chair-CEO separations at McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen. Owners are a necessary lever on legal alcohol and pharmaceutical supply, where conduct matters and lobbying is a contributor. The target also covers illicit narcotics such as heroin, methamphetamine and illicit fentanyl, and treatment systems, which lie outside listed companies. Owners therefore cannot deliver most of the outcome, and others must act.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Alcohol, World Health Organization, 2024-06-28
- The Role of the Alcohol Industry in Policy Interventions for Alcohol-Impaired Driving, National Academies Press, 2018-01-17
- Shareholders told opioid companies they had an oversight problem; they're starting to listen, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2019-09-11
2 campaigns on record
The Teamsters asked shareholders to vote against McKesson's executive pay package, arguing the company had not held leadership accountable for its role in distributing opioids, and separately pushed to split the CEO and board-chair roles.
Result: McKesson's executive pay package received only 26.6 percent shareholder support in the 2018 vote, described at the time as one of the worst results among S&P 500 companies. This was a vote-no campaign against a management-sponsored say-on-pay proposal, not a shareholder-filed resolution.
McKesson cut CEO John Hammergren's total pay by about $1.95 million (roughly 10 percent) and said it would factor opioid-related compliance risk into future pay decisions; in 2021, after an $8.1 billion opioid settlement, the board also imposed a further $2.9 million discretionary reduction to CEO Brian Tyler's pay and cut a former CEO's payments by $780,000.
The coalition asked opioid distributors and manufacturers to strengthen board oversight of opioid-related risk, review whether executive bonuses were tied to opioid sales volume, and add clawback policies so pay could be taken back after misconduct.
With Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility members, state and city pension funds, Catholic and other faith-based investors
Result: As of October 15, 2018, one year into the campaign, the coalition had submitted 35 resolutions at 11 public companies, of which 10 had received shareholder votes, including majority votes among independent voters at Assertio Therapeutics (formerly Depomed) and AmerisourceBergen, per National Catholic Reporter. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility's later retrospective gives a wider total of 20 companies engaged, reports that a majority of shareholder proposals, 52%, led to agreements with the companies rather than a vote, and counts seven resolutions winning majority votes at Rite Aid, Walgreens, Mallinckrodt, Mylan and Assertio Therapeutics plus two more winning majority support at AmerisourceBergen. The coalition's resolutions were filed across the 2017 to 2019 proxy seasons, and SHARE's account of the full run to 2023 describes more than 100 proposals.
Twelve of the companies engaged conducted opioid-related risk assessments, ten adopted misconduct clawback policies, and three separated the chair and CEO roles, those three being McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, according to the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility's account of the coalition's tally.
To stem opioid crisis, investment coalition pressures supply chain, National Catholic Reporter
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.