Minimum alcohol pricing will have a range of beneficial effects on health, it was claimed today.
Professor John Appleby, who is chief economist at health charity The King’s Fund, based in London, UK, makes his predictions in the British Medical Journal.
Professor Appleby believes that a 40p minimum price per unit of alcohol would cut alcohol consumption, preventing needless deaths and reducing hospital admissions. He refers to Prime Minister David Cameron’s comments on binge drinking, which accounts for half of all alcohol consumed in the UK.
"The crime and violence it causes drains resources in our hospitals, generates mayhem on our streets, and spreads fear in our communities," Mr Cameron said, as he proposed raising the minimum price of alcohol.
Professor Appleby adds that alcohol is much more affordable now than it was 30 years ago, and spending on alcohol more than doubled between 1964 and 2004. Hospital admissions wholly due to alcohol doubled between 2002 and 2010 to around 265,000 in England, while alcohol related deaths follow a similar pattern.
"Whether or not these observations constitute a substantial problem now, given the lags in health and other effects of drinking and recent falls in consumption [due to the recession], the impacts of various price and non-price interventions to reduce drinking have been extensively modelled, and they show significant results," writes Professor Appleby.
"For the government’s proposed minimum price tactic of 40 pence per unit of alcohol, the impacts include a reduction in the mean annual consumption per drinker of 2.4 per cent, in deaths of 1,149 annually, and in hospital admissions of 38,900 annually.
"A 50 pence minimum price would more than double all these effects," he concludes.
Meanwhile yesterday a senior medical campaigner told MPs of his backing for price controls on alcohol.
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, now special adviser to the Royal College of Physicians, told the health select committee: "We would like to change the culture of drinking, but price changes culture, the differential between the on-trade and the off trade has changed our culture already, so we can change culture again by using the lever of price."
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