In 2012, the Scottish Parliament passed legislation to introduce a 50p per unit minimum price for alcohol. This was fought by the Scotch Whisky Association and it is the subject of an ongoing legal case. One reacts to the PHE and said that what this report shows is that clearly abuse of alcohol can cause significant health problems, but no-one wants to interfere with the rights of adults who want to enjoy a drink responsibly.The issue of minimum unit pricing is under review while we await the outcome of the court case in Scotland.
On minimum pricing, it said one province in Canada, which had put a 10% increase on minimum prices, saw the consumption of beer cut by 10%, a 22% cut for high-strength beer, 5.9% for spirits and 4.6% for wine. Even more than a million alcoholics went to hospital, half of which occur in the lowest three socio-economic groups. Even deaths rise just because of drinking, particularly for liver disease which has seen a 400% increase since 1970 as what the report said. Also, more working years of life are lost in England as a result of alcohol-related deaths than from more than 12 types of cancer combined according to Times Of Malta.
Based on research, the self-regulation of marketing by the alcohol industry is ineffective. It said sales of alcohol in England and Wales have increased by 42% since 1980 - from roughly 400 million litres in the early 1980s, with a peak at 567 million litres in 2008, and a subsequent decline. This growth has been driven by increased consumption among women, a shift to higher strength products, and increasing affordability of alcohol, particularly through the 1980s and 1990s. But most alcohol is now bought from shops and drunk at home.
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, said that this report provides yet more evidence of the effectiveness of raising the price of the cheapest alcohol to tackle alcohol-related harm according to an article on The Independent. Increased duty on the cheapest drinks, alongside minimum unit pricing, would make a real difference to the lives of some of our most vulnerable groups and ease the burden on our health service. These measures would also lower the burden of premature mortality due to alcohol, thereby increasing economic output. At the same time, ordinary drinkers will not be penalized. Minimum unit pricing will leave pub prices untouched, and tax on the cheapest, strongest drinks will be targeted at those drinks which are preferentially consumed by harmful and dependent drinkers.
So it is actually one of the best solutions for alcohol drinkers.
