Lancet Report - Minimum Unit Pricing - "will save UK lives"

As the Appeal into minimum pricing enters its second week in Scotland a report published in the Lancet has stated that setting a minimum alcohol price of 45 pence a unit in Britain would cut deaths and hospital time among heavy drinkers - i.e. the 5% of people who drink at rates classified as "harmful".

The interpretation of the report stated that “Irrespective of income, moderate drinkers were little affected by a minimum unit price of £0.45 in our model, with the greatest effects noted for harmful drinkers. Because harmful drinkers on low incomes purchase more alcohol at less than the minimum unit price threshold compared with other groups, they would be affected most by this policy. Large reductions in consumption in this group would however coincide with substantial health gains in terms of morbidity and mortality related to reduced alcohol consumption.”

John Holmes of Sheffield University, who led the study stated "Policy-makers need to balance larger reductions in consumption by harmful drinkers on a low income against the large health gains that could be experienced in this group from reductions in alcohol-related illness and death,"

The research found that 74% of the total reduction in alcohol consumption would be among harmful drinkers - with a predicted drop in alcohol-related deaths of 860 a year and hospital admissions of 29,900 a year.

In terms of drinking levels, the report predicted that moderate drinkers in the lowest income group would cut their drinking by around 3.8 units a year - or around 2 pints of beer - meaning they would spend only around 4 pence per year more on alcohol. 

It should be noted that the report also claimed there would be virtually no adverse impact on the amounts spent by moderate drinkers who each year would have 1.6 fewer units - about a pint of beer - and spend around 78 pence more on alcohol.

The full report can be viewed here: 'Effects of minimum unit pricing for alcohol on different income and socioeconomic groups: a modelling study'