Prevention policies and alcohol-harm

Central to our thinking are the WHO ‘best buys’. These interventions, all with a high cost-benefit ratio, are: increasing alcohol taxes; bans or comprehensive restrictions on alcohol advertising across multiple media; and reducing the availability of alcohol through restrictions on hours of sale. We conceptualise them as: ‘price, promotion, and availability.’ All three of these are population-based preventative measures: they impact the entire population of people who drink alcohol with the aim of reducing the myriad of bad health and social outcomes which are related to alcohol. Currently, the Alcohol Health Alliance is engaged in a campaign to increase alcohol duty (alcohol tax) and to introduce a minimum unit price in England (a floor price below which alcohol cannot be sold, which exists in Scotland and will soon be introduced in Wales). We also firmly support restrictions on alcohol marketing (to tackle promotion), and reformation of licensing regulations (to reduce availability). I will be mainly looking at price interventions.