Alcohol drinking statistics

A new Parliamentary Briefing Paper released on 27 June provides a useful summary of statistics on drinking alcohol among adults in Great Britain and children in England. Data on alcohol related hospital admissions in England and Scotland and alcohol related deaths in England are also shown.

Following a declining trend between 2005 and 2012, the paper concludes the proportion of men and women drinking in the past week in Great Britain has remained stable over the past three years of available data. Men continue to be more likely to drink than women and young adults drink less frequently than older age groups. However, young adults are more likely to exceed daily benchmarks regarding alcohol consumption.

In 2014, 8% of children aged 11-15 in England drank alcohol in the last week; this was the lowest level recorded since a peak of 27% in 1996. Most pupils who drank in the last week had done so on one or two days (63% and 25% respectively). On the days they did drink, 45% drank more than four units of alcohol on average.

Alcohol-related conditions were wholly responsible for 307,710 hospital admissions in England in 2013/14. In 2014/15 there were 35,059 alcohol-related stays for patients resident in Scotland.

There were 6,592 alcohol related deaths in England in 2013. Alcoholic liver disease was the most common cause of death.

The report can be found here: 'Briefing Paper CBP7826: Statistics on Alcohol'

Source: House of Commons Library