NICE calls for minimum pricing for alcohol

2nd June 2010, 11:51am

Introducing a minimum price for alcohol alongside other measures that make it harder to buy alcohol, like reducing the number of outlets selling alcohol, will help save thousands of lives each year, said the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

One in four men and women are currently drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol that are causing, or have the potential to cause, physical and mental damage.

The number of alcohol-related deaths has more than doubled in the past 16 years, with over 8,000 people dying of conditions such as alcohol poisoning and liver cirrhosis every year.

Professor Anne Ludbrook, a health economist from the University of Aberdeen who helped develop the NICE guidance on alcohol-use disorders, said: "Alcohol is much more affordable now than it ever has been, and the price people pay does not reflect the cost of the health and social harms that arise.

"When it is sold at very low price, people often buy and then consume more than they otherwise would have done. It is a dangerous pattern which many people have unknowingly fallen into."

Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians and chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, welcomes NICE's review of the evidence for minimum pricing: "It is reassuring to hear these recommendations from NICE. Week in, week out I see the burden of alcohol misuse in my clinics. There is not a family out there that has not been affected by it."

Alcohol Concern also welcomes the guidance. Chief executive Don Shenker said: "With practically every health body in the country now backing the move on alcohol minimum pricing, the new government needs to accept the evidence and introduce a minimum price urgently before thousands more lives are affected. 

"The Government should also act immediately to ensure children's exposure to alcohol advertising is a low as possible, by overhauling advertising regulations which purport to protect children, but actually leave children saturated with alcohol advertising on a daily basis.

"NICE have found evidence that alcohol marketing increases young people's consumption of alcohol, it seems untenable for the current codes to stay in place when so many children are now drinking more than ever before."

However, Gavin Partington of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, believes that this will punish people rather than solve the issue: "Sadly, this guidance proposes measures that will not address the root causes of alcohol misuse and will merely punish the majority of British consumers who drink responsibly.

"We need to educate people better and earlier about the risks associated with excessive drinking and we need proper enforcement of laws to address misuse and related anti-social behaviour."

"Minimum pricing is probably illegal and won't stop problem drinkers.  Advertising is already tightly regulated and banning it would hit the pockets of millions of consumers and threaten the loss of thousands of jobs.

"We all want to tackle alcohol misuse, so let's focus on those who have the problem not punish everybody."

Related Articles:

• 22 Jun 2010 - NICE calls for food industry to reduce salt and saturated fats
• 23 Jun 2009 - Scotland moves closer to minimum pricing for alcohol

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Vellocatus

02 June 2010 at 2:30pm

Most people hate to say "I told you so" but YOU WERE TOLD by the SMOKERS, you just chose to ignore the warnings that smoking was only the start of many attacks on personal choices and individual liberty. NOW the target for DE - NORMALISATION is YOU!!! Replace all reference to 'alcohol' and 'drinking' in this article with smoke and smoking and you have the anti-smoking campaign in a nutshell. YOU believed all the misinformation then - YOU must believe the same with this. The smoking campaign has decimated pubs and the hospitality trade - this campaign may just finish them off altogether but their primary goals will fail. Enjoy your social life!

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