Raising alcohol price shows many benefits

Mar 24 2010

By Candy Lashkari

Raise the price of alcohol and reduce the ill effects it causes. May seem like plain common sense and yes now it has research data to support it. British researchers in the University of Sheffield have used a epidemiological, mathematical model to prove that as general price increases the alcohol consumption decreases. So the alcohol related deaths and health care costs will also decrease.

According to the findings of Robin Purshouse, PhD and his colleagues at Sheffield, England, a general 10% price rise was likely to reduce alcohol consumption by 4.4% and reduce deaths related to alcohol drinking by 1,460 in a 10 year implementation period. England's Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson has been calling for a pricing policy for alcohol which will involve setting a minimum price per unit of alcohol sold.

If there is a minimum cost of 50 pence per unit (that is about $2.25 per ounce) after 10 years you would have avoided 2,900 annual premature deaths. There would be 41,000 lesser cases of chronic illnesses per year and 8,000 less injuries per year. There would also be 92,000 less hospital admissions per year. This will save the English healthcare system about $406 million each year.

The average yearly expenditure for a drinker will rise by $56. Although a moderate drinker will see it rise only by $18 as compared to a harmful drinker who will shell out an excess $245 annually. Also since young people are very sensitive to pricing policies, there will be “substantial reduction in alcohol consumption and subsequent harm that could be achieved with minimum pricing strategies.”

According to Dr Purshouse "When you look at the range of benefits, it's not just the illnesses that people would associated most commonly with alcohol and heavy drinking, although those will also go down.”

Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians and chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance, stated: "A minimum unit price is not a silver bullet for alcohol-related harm. It represents just one of a raft of measures, but to omit it from policy would be to disregard the compelling evidence supporting it."

The Scottish Government is likely to implement a 40 pence minimum price per unit of alcohol if it’s much debated Alcohol Bill gets passed. The authors of the Sheffield research mention that the price rise will be, “effective for reduction of consumption, healthcare costs, and health-related quality of life losses in all population subgroups.”