Minimum alcohol price ‘will save over 1,000 lives’

Home Secretary Theresa May announced last month the coalition is planning to set a minimum price of 40p per unit of alcohol in an effort to turn the tide against binge drinking.

The proposal could see alcohol-related deaths, hospital admissions and consumption fall significantly, according to an article published on the website of the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal. The minimum would apply in England and Wales.

The report’s author, John Appleby, chief economist at health charity the King’s Fund, said the 40p minimum price would reduce alcohol-related deaths by 1,149 and would see 38,900 fewer hospital admissions.

It would also cut each person’s alcohol consumption by 2.4 per cent.

He added that a minimum price of 50p would more than double the effects.

A minimum price per unit of alcohol will be introduced in England alongside plans to ban the sale of multi-buy discount deals.

The proposals have been met with outrage from the drinks industry, however, with claims the plans will harm businesses in the UK and will do nothing to combat the root cause of binge drinking.

The Wine and Spirit Trade association said minimum unit pricing would punish responsible consumers with higher prices; improving education and information campaigns would be a more effective way to deal with the problem.

And some in the industry have suggested minimum pricing would face a court challenge.

Irresponsible drinking is estimated to cost the UK an estimated £21bn a year.

The article, Drinking nation: have we had enough?, highlighted the pattern of increased spending on alcohol since the 1960s.

Between 1964 and 2004, the amount spent on drink doubled, before falling by 17 per cent – back to 1996 levels – over the next five years.

It increased again slightly in 2010, to a total of £42.1bn – a third of the amount spent on the NHS each year – with each person over the age of 18 spending an average of £17 a week.

Mr Appleby said price and disposable income were the key to determining the demand for alcohol and spending often dipped in times of economic recession.

He said the fall in spending between 2004 and 2009 was partly due to economic recession.

Mr Appleby added that alcohol was much more affordable now than it was 30 years ago, apart from brief periods since 1980, which generally coincided with economic recessions and lower disposable incomes.

Alcohol-related hospital admissions and deaths have also followed a general upward trend over the past decade.

Mr Appleby said alcohol-related hospital admissions doubled in England between 2002 to 2010, to around 265,000 each year.

Alcohol-related deaths increased between 2001 and 2008 but fell slightly in 2009, to 6,584. Binge drinking among young men has seen a sharp decline since 1998.

“Whether or not these observations constitute a substantial problem now – given the lags in health and other effects of drinking and recent falls in consumption – the impacts of various price and non-price interventions to reduce drinking have been extensively modelled, and they show significant results,” Mr Appleby said.

“For the Government’s proposed minimum price tactic of 40p per unit of alcohol, the impacts include a reduction in the mean annual consumption per drinker of 2.4 per cent, in deaths of 1,149 annually and in hospital admissions of 38,900 annually.

“A 50p minimum price would more than double all these effects.”

The Government hopes minimum pricing will bring to an end the era of cheap white ciders, spirits and super-strength lagers.

It also wants to fight the practice of “pre-loading” – when people drink a lot of cheap alcohol before going to a nightclub or pub.