Price hikes will help heaviest drinkers

Published on Thursday 29 October 2009 21:06

INCREASING the price of alcohol will help Scotland's heaviest drinkers to reduce consumption and improve their health, new research suggests.

Some have claimed that introducing minimum pricing will have no impact on those drinking dangerously high amounts because of their addiction.

But research in Edinburgh has now found that heavy drinkers – many drinking more than 200 units a week – are affected by pricing, and the drinkers say higher costs will help to reduce their intake.

Critics of minimum pricing, which is being proposed by the Scottish Government to tackle problem drinking, said it would lead to addicts taking extreme measures to obtain alcohol.

Professor Jonathan Chick, a consultant psychiatrist at the alcohol problem service in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital,

said some research had suggested heavy drinkers were not so affected by price. But he claimed that these surveys did not reflect really heavy drinking.

"Our patients drink, on average, 200 units a week," he said. "Some drink double or treble that. They are in a different league."

The researchers, from the Royal Edinburgh and Queen Margaret University, interviewed 377 patients who were referred to alcohol problem services at Edinburgh hospitals in 2008-9. On average, they were drinking 198 units a week. Most of the patients' drinking (93 per cent) was from off-sales – from shops and supermarkets rather than pubs and clubs.

The average price they were paying was 43p per unit of alcohol, compared with the 72p average price being paid by Scottish drinkers in 2007.

Prof Chick said 70 per cent of the units that were drunk were bought for less than 40p per unit. He said some of his patients were able to buy cider for as little as 9p a unit, and the lower the price they paid, the more units they consumed.

"Half of our patients are drinking more than 200 units a week," he said. If they only have to pay another 10p per unit, they are going to have to find an extra 20 on their alcohol bill."

Gavin Partington, of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, said: "The people this survey refers to are actually suffering from alcoholism. Anybody who suggests the way of treating people who have a serious problem like this is with price mechanisms is approaching this from totally the wrong perspective."