Alcohol Nation

Action on Addiction has launched a campaign supported by alcohol experts from across the UK to highlight the consequences to the nation’s health of drinking too much alcohol, and to work with the Government to develop evidence-based policies to counter these harms

I’m 30 years old and have been a regular binge drinker since I was about 16. I typically go out every Friday and Saturday night and drink till I can’t drink any more, either because I pass out, or because the club is shutting. I usually also go out and have a couple of bottles of wine with a friend during the week.

I recently went for a health check as I’d been feeling a bit under the weather, and they told me I had alcoholic hepatitis, and was on the way to cirrhosis. I now have to give up drinking, and might even need a liver transplant one day. I wish I’d known this could happen to me – I thought liver disease was something that happened to old men.
Rebecca, 30

Action on Addiction is asking the Government to:

1. Provide long-term funding for an alcohol worker in every hospital.
Up to a third of all admissions to A&E are alcohol related. The health costs of alcohol problems are estimated at £1.7 billion per year. In the handful of hospitals where there is already an alcohol worker, they provide an invaluable service, identifying problems in patients on the wards, giving training to all frontline staff on how to deal with alcohol issues and delivering brief interventions to patients in A&E with alcoholrelated conditions.

Research has shown that brief interventions in A&E are very effective in reducing hazardous drinking in non-dependent drinkers. If this was implemented it could represent a considerable saving to the NHS, through bringing down the current costs of alcohol problems, in addition to other benefits such as reduced waiting lists.

2. Implement a tax based on the percentage of alcohol in a drink.
The price of alcohol, relative to average income, has halved since 1965, coinciding with a massive rise in consumption. Research in Australia demonstrated that when a tax based on the percentage of alcohol in drinks was introduced, combined with the launch of low alcohol alternatives by the alcohol industry, people switched to the lower alcohol alternative because it was cheaper. As a general rule, the higher the price of alcohol relative to income, the less the nation as a whole drinks. Alcoholics and heavy drinkers tend to be just as responsive to changes in the price of alcohol as moderate drinkers.

3. Fund a research initiative working with the alcohol industry on the effectiveness of warning labels on bottles and advertising.
There is mixed evidence from a number of other countries on the effectiveness of warning labels on alcoholic beverages. However, the messages tested have been fairly weak, and no research of this kind has been tried in the UK. The Department of Health is already discussing labelling with the beverage alcohol industry in the context of units and safe limits. Action on Addiction would like them to go a step further and test key health warning messages. With the ‘Choosing Health’ White Paper prioritising raising awareness of the contribution of alcohol to obesity, and the FSA investigation of the effects of food labelling, we recommend that the alcohol industry follow suit in what could be an effective tool to influence behavioural change. These changes could have a significant impact in a short space of time.