10,473 people died from alcohol-specific causes in the UK in 2023, an increase of 4.2% since 2022 and a shocking 38% since 2019.
This is the fourth year in a row in which deaths have hit record highs. Alcohol-specific deaths are from conditions wholly attributable to alcohol, such as alcohol caused liver disease.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are also thousands of deaths from conditions that alcohol contributes to, but are also caused by other risk factors – for instance cancers and heart disease. In England alone, there were 22,644 deaths from these alcohol-related conditions. Again, there has been a shocking increase in these deaths since 2019, as data from OHID show:
IAS’s Chief Executive, Dr Katherine Severi, highlighted the need for policy action:
We’ve seen record-high deaths from alcohol in the UK every single year since the pandemic. This simply cannot become the new normal, so the government must make tackling alcohol harm a top priority in 2025.
Alcohol kills people young, depriving thousands of families across the UK of their loved ones far too soon. From an economic perspective this places a strain on our productivity, with 150 thousand years of working life lost due to alcohol in 2023 in England alone.
For the Government’s Growth and Health Missions to succeed, we need measures that are proven effective at reducing alcohol harm. Minimum Unit Pricing for alcohol has reduced alcohol-specific deaths by 13% in Scotland, with the greatest benefits seen among the most disadvantaged communities. We hope this will be a keystone policy in a national alcohol strategy, which is urgently needed.”
– Dr Katherine Severi, Chief Executive, Institute of Alcohol Studies.
Although the number of deaths is higher, the alcohol death rate has fallen for the first time since before the pandemic.
UK nations
The increase in alcohol-specific deaths from 2022 to 2023 was mostly due to increases in England and Wales, which saw increases of 4.6% and 15.6%. There was no increase in deaths in Scotland over this period and a slight decrease in Northern Ireland.
The introduction of Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) in Scotland reduced the number of deaths that would have occurred had the policy not been implemented, as the policy’s final evaluation found. The following chart highlights the mitigating effect of MUP since it was introduced in 2018.
The gap in the death rate between Scotland and England has closed significantly over the past 20 years, due to the evidence-based and effective policy action taken in Scotland compared to inertia in England:
