Social Care
Minimum alcohol pricing in Britain ‘would save lives’
Call for England to follow Scottish example.
Could England be about to follow the Scottish example and bring forward proposals to place a minimum price on alcohol?
That came a step closer today with the publication of arguments In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, from a group of leading doctors and academics. They claimed that Scottish plans for minimum pricing were a “simple and effective” way to tackle alcohol-related deaths.
At Equal and Diverse we are well versed in the profound effects of alcohol misuse not least in instances of domestic violence and have written about the real cost of such abuse. Scotland is determined to tackle the issue and it seems that there is a head of steam growing in England.
The Department for Health said it was due to launch a new “alcohol strategy”.
The group of leading experts said alcohol was linked to 13,000 new cases of cancer each year and associated with one in four deaths of people in the 15-to-24 age group.
Their letter was signed by the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Nursing among others.
It said: “We need to narrow the price gap between alcohol bought in bars and restaurants with alcohol bought in supermarkets and off-licences, to make bulk discounts and pocket-money prices a thing of the past.”
“We urgently need to raise the price of cheap drink,” it states because of a “wealth of evidence” linking the cost of alcohol and levels of harm.
If the coalition is not ready for the “bold action” of minimum pricing, it says MPs must not “lose sight” of taxation as a tool to lower drinking levels.
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, special adviser to the Royal College of Physicians, said nearly 10,000 lives a year could be saved by a minimum price of 50p per alcohol unit.
He told the Telegraph that the government had acknowledged the importance of price by introducing a ban on selling alcohol below cost, but said this did not go “far enough”.
“We’re talking about saving lives here.
“It’s not just about damage to individuals who drink too much but their children and unborn babies and the victims of alcohol-related crime. The most effective way of targeting the heaviest drinkers is probably through a minimum unit price.”
Dr Donald Macaskill
Source: BBC and Daily Telegraph.
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Comment
Katie
March 12, 2012 at 3:33 amBrighton city centre is dadreful on Fridays and Saturday nights as it’s full of drunken yobs, throwing up and being rowdy. If increasing prices makes these youths drink more responsibly then I am all for stopping retailers charging so little for booze. It’s not the pubs, it’s the supermarkets we should be blaming. These kids get tanked up at home before their night of drinking even begins.