THE rest of the UK must “follow Scotland’s lead” on alcohol pricing, experts say.
Minimum unit pricing – a headline Scottish Government policy aimed at saving lives and cutting NHS costs – came into force here in May 2018 after protracted legal challenges.
The 50p baseline marked a UK first and last month a report by NHS Health Scotland found it had been implemented effectively, adding that it “has the potential to improve Scotland’s relationship with alcohol and reduce the harm it causes”.
Then, earlier this month, a medical conference in Glasgow heard how new data shows a 21.5% year-on-year fall in alcohol-related deaths in Glasgow, when 2017 and 2018 results are compared.
Now fresh evidence shows the policy has had the biggest impact in the households that previously bought the most alcohol, suggesting the policy will “positively impact public health over time”.
The paper, by Newcastle University, was published last night in the respected medical journal BMJ.
It uses shopping data from more than 5300 households, comparing these to information gathered in northern England and beyond to control for “potential cross-border effects”.
It found the law change led to a 7.6% drop in weekly retail purchases of alcohol per adult, per household.
Reductions were highest in the purchasing of beer, spirit and cider .
However, researchers found “no evidence of a significant differential negative impact on expenditure by lower income groups”, concluding that minimum unit pricing could be “an effective policy option in other jurisdictions”.
Commenting in a linked editorial, Sunderland University’s John Mooney and Eric Carlin of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh said that while “no single policy lever should be seen as a panacea” and the policy is still “regarded in Scotland as one component of the overall strategy”, the reductions described are more than double those predicted before the change was made.
However, they wrote: “Surely it is time to follow Scotland’s lead and implement MUP [minimum unit pricing] across the rest of the UK.
“Action is especially pressing for those regions, such as north east England, with comparable levels of harm from alcohol.”
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