Double drink prices, urges doctors -

The Telegraph - UK ^ | March 5, 2004 | Celia Hall

[UnklGene]

Double drink prices, urge doctors -

By Celia Hall, Medical Editor (Filed: 05/03/2004)

Doctors called yesterday for the price of alcohol to be almost doubled in an attempt to reduce the harm caused by excessive drinking.

The Academy of Medical Sciences, an independent body of senior doctors and researchers, has concluded that attitudes to drinking need to change.

Click to enlarge The best way to cut the amount people drink is to limit the affordability and availability of alcohol, they say.

The doctors' leader, Prof Sir Michael Marmot, said: "Alcohol is a good friend and a bad enemy. We are not against alcohol. It gives pleasure and also confers health benefits."

However, the academy argues that drinking levels should return to those of the early 1970s when the population drank on average seven litres of alcohol per head a year. This compares with the 11.1 litres now consumed. The figures represent a rise of 50 per cent in 30 years.

They say there is a direct link between the relative cheapness of alcohol and the increasing amounts consumed.

The doctors have called for the price of beer, wine and spirits to be increased to 1970 levels. In relative terms alcohol was nearly twice as expensive 30 years ago, they say.

Sir Michael, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University College London, said such measures would have a greater impact on the pockets of young people who drank too much than on people who drank sensibly. "We believe that if you can reduce the average you will also be able to do something about the heavy drinkers," he said.

"A strategic programme is needed to curb the nation's escalating level of drinking in the interests of individual and public health. The country has reached a point where it is necessary and urgent to call time on runaway alcohol consumption."

The academy's report, Calling Time, also proposes limits on the amount of alcohol people can bring in from Europe and lower drink driving limits - down from 80mg per 100ml of blood to 50mg and to zero for drivers younger than 21.

The report says the current travellers' allowance gives a heavy drinker a 272-day supply.

They say this should be reduced to the permitted level of nicotine imported for personal use which gives a 20-a-day smoker a 40-day supply.

"Educational approaches have been disappointing but this may be swamped by contrary advertising," the report says. "Price modulation usually through tax increase is highly effective, particularly in under-age drinkers.

"A 10 per cent rise in the price of all alcoholic beverages has been estimated to reduce mortality from alcohol-related conditions by seven to 37 per cent."

Prof Ian Gilmore, registrar of the Royal College of Physicians and a member of the working party, accepted that their recommendations would not please politicians. "The report makes it very clear that targeting problem drinkers is not sufficient," Prof Gilmore said.

"It collects the compelling evidence that one of the most effective ways of reducing harm to individuals is to reduce the escalating national consumption of alcohol.

"This challenge makes alcohol an issue for society as a whole, and we encourage a wide debate on the policy options of proven benefit, such as increasing price and limiting access, unpalatable to politicians though they may be. The doctors said that drinking at levels of one or two drinks a day provided proven health benefits but that higher amounts began to do harm.

Deaths from chronic liver disease had risen from 124 in men and 86 in women, aged 45 to 54, in 1970 to 805 and 405 respectively in 2000. Alcohol is responsible for 70 per cent of cirrhosis deaths.

Prof Gilmore said: "I now see liver cirrhosis in people in their 20s and 30s, pretty women, who think they will get a warning sign. But the first thing you know is that you go yellow and your belly swells up. People are not just drinking more, they are drinking younger."

The report says that over 30 years chronic liver disease has escalated by more than 450 per cent.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said the Cabinet was producing its own report on reducing harm caused by alcohol in the next few weeks.

[freeeee]

[SheLion]

The world is out of control. Everyone wants to control everyone else. We are going to destroy ourselves before long.

[Wombat101]

"Cut doctor's salries by Half", says Wombat101.

Aparently some of them are not practicing medicine...

[avg_freeper]

May be we should double the cost of malpractice insurance because there are just too darn many people being harmed by doctors.

[swarthyguy]

Well, it's logical. Since the expected of Tsunami of non smokers, who are free to venture into the clear aired orgasmatronbars, haven't appeared, the only choice left for a bar owner is to raise liquor prices.

I love it.

[Sofa King]

No, the government has no natural right to legislate our life styles.

[realpatriot71]

Great, mind if I tax your internet? How about tripling your gasoline tax?

Alcohol is a vice - like gambling - which the internet and gasoline are niether. But that is besides the point, if taxes are put on internet and gasoline, it's not as if I have a right to buy such items at a "reasonable" price. I don't have to buy, and I don't pay the tax. It's a choice.

[SheLion]

I love it.

Well, all those who hate smokers WILL get hit in the gut just like us. You watch! Then they will REALLY be crying the blues!

[COBOL2Java]

I had a couple pints once and saw those faces in the glass!

[realpatriot71]

Then I guess you approve of removing the laws banning distilling your own spirits?

If you want to make your own whiskey - your private stash - I don't care.

[tjwmason]

Maybe they need to study what happened during American prohibition.

It's already happening. The European Union's one good point (one and only good point) is the free movement of goods throughout its area, this means that it is impossible to stop people bringing alcohol (and also tobacco) back from France (where the tax is far far lower). Revenues at pubs throughout the south of England are dropping sharply, pubs are a part of English heritage originating over 1000 years ago, and excessive alcohol taxation is killing them off. More tax merely means more importing from France, merely means that criminal gangs get involved; as you say, look at prohibition.

[swarthyguy]

And my gloating and schadefreude will be ecstasy.

Even now, it's fun to step into a bar, order a drink, ask for an ashtray, be refused, and leave no tip. Unfair, sure. So what?

It's too bad that all the Rest/Bar associations have caved in to the party line. Their members are the hurting ones.

Tough luck.

[freeeee]

So long as government pays for medical expenses, it will have a justification to dictate even the smallest details of your life, even what you eat.

Just as every aspect of a child's life is mandated by his parents, so is an adult's who is babied by the state. And for the same exact reason.

This is the biggest reason that we cannot afford national health care - it's cost is other people's liberty, and it's not theirs to spend.

[Gabz]

Sheesh.....first I start making my own cigarettes....i guess now I'm going to have to start making my own beer --- because you know they are already working on this nonsense here in the states.

I'm glad we moved to a small farm - I'll start growing my own tobacco and then start adding the beer making crops.......

[firebrand]

I hope they don't do this in New York. I don't think I can afford a $26 martini.

[KarlInOhio]

Yeeeeeeaaaaagh!

That makes me want to drink just so their lips won't touch mine.

[tjwmason]

Yea right, what could the Europeans possible learn from us? CoughCough-noappeasement/federalism/billofrights/abolishslavery/wincoldwar-CoughCough

Not wishing to get in the way of your wonderful flowing attack on Europe (which I too enjoy attacking); but this article is about England, and we beat you on a Bill of Rights (ours is 1689 and was preceeded by Magna Carta back in 1215), abolition of slavery (1833), we don't want or need federalism (that's all about Europeans running our stuff over here), we are not appeasing anybody, and it was Baroness Thatcher who stood proudly alongside President Reagan in winning the Cold War.

[freeeee]

That makes me want to drink just so their lips won't touch mine.

Just wear a nip on a necklace. It wards them off like garlic does vampires.

[tjwmason]

Here is an example of an arisotcratic oligarchy using class warfare to force their puritannical panacea down our throats.

There is nothing aristocratic about these loons. The view of the aristocracy is neatly summarised in the phrase 'as tipsy as a Lord'. Puritanism has always been a disease of the middle orders, both the working class and the aristos love to have fun.

[metesky]

Prof Sir Michael Marmot