Bid to end cheap drink and alcohol adverts

URGENT action is needed to limit the availability of alcohol and tackle low supermarket prices, doctors have said.

The conference heard that alcohol misuse was costing the UK billions of pounds and causing massive ill heath.

Doctors said that restricting the hours when alcohol could be sold and introducing a minimum price per unit would help combat the problem, strengthening their previous resolve to push for action on the issue.

BMA Scottish Council member Sue Robertson said: "In one day in Scotland alone, alcohol will cost 97.5 million in terms of health, violence and crime.

"Alcohol kills five people, 98 people will be admitted to hospital with an alcohol related condition and 23 people will be convicted of a drink-driving offence."

Dr Robertson said round the clock drinking in the UK, introduced in 2005, needed to be scaled back. "Less time selling drinks equals less drinks being sold," she said.

Dr Robertson said advertising also needed to be stopped to cut sales and to stop encouraging young people to drink.

Delegates also heard calls for a minimum price of alcohol, saying it would stop cut-price drinks deals by supermarkets, which were putting many pubs out of business.

However, Charlie Bell from the BMA medical students' group said the way to tackle the problem of alcohol misuse was education, rather than further restrictions.

"The measures suggested would mean more money going into the sellers of alcohol, when we should be educating to prevent the problem in the first place," he said.