By Professor John Robertson OBA

From BBC Reporting Scotland today but not making it to their website, so a direct feed from Scottish Health Action of Alcohol Problems, claiming an ‘unmet need’ for alcohol treatment services.

Not mentioned by BBC Scotland, these facts.

First, on existing services:

From Public Health Scotland on 25 June 2024:

Alcohol and drug treatment services both seeing around 90% of referrals within 3 weeks, year after year, with a tiny, not statistically significant, gap in performance.

The news is that these services are both target-hitting consistently and should be getting media attention for that but they never do.

Source:

https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/national-drug-and-alcohol-treatment-waiting-times/national-drug-and-alcohol-treatment-waiting-times-1-january-2024-to-31-march-2024/

Second, plummeting consumption:

From The Scottish Health Survey 2023 – volume 1: main report, published today, the above, graph showing a steady but limited fall in average alcohol consumption in the early years of the devolved Scottish Government (Labour/Lib Dem) then a sharper fall under the SNP from 2008.¹

The Minimum Unit Pricing legislation came into effect from May 2018.

Research by Newcastle University published in May 2021 found that alcohol sales dropped by 7.7% in Scotland following the introduction of a minimum price, when compared to north-east England.

A study published in 2021 found reductions in overall purchases of alcohol, largely restricted to households that bought the most alcohol, which continued into 2020. A study carried out by Public Health Scotland, and the University of Glasgow, found that the implementation of alcohol minimum unit pricing in Scotland led to a 13.4% reduction in deaths from alcohol-specific causes.²

Sources:

1. https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-health-survey-2023-volume-1-main-report/pages/14/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_(Minimum_Pricing)_(Scotland)_Act_2012#:~:text=The%20Alcohol%20(Minimum%20Pricing)%20(,programme%20to%20counter%20alcohol%20problems.&text=An%20Act%20of%20the%20Scottish%20Parliament%20to%20make%20provision%20about,premises;%20and%20for%20connected%20purposes.&text=The%20Act%20was%20passed%20with,whip%20and%20supported%20the%20government.

Third, alcohol-related hospital admissions continue to plummet 

From Public Health Scotland on 26 March 2024:

General hospital admissions resulting from conditions wholly attributable to alcohol peaked in 2007/08 (855 per 100,000 population) but have fallen most years since and reduced by 37.5% between 2007/08 and 2022/23 (532 per 100,000).

The 2022 Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) reports that 19% of respondents (aged 16 and over) stated that they did not drink any alcohol. This represents a rise on the equivalent 2021 figure which was 16%. There has been a steady increase in the percentage of SHeS respondents aged 16-24 years who report that they do not drink between 2016 and 2022 (10% in 2016 rising to 22% in 2022).

https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/alcohol-consumption-and-harms-dashboard/alcohol-consumption-and-harms-dashboard-20222023/

So, first, the fall in alcohol-related hospital admissions steepened after the launch of the SNP Minimum Unit Pricing policy in 2018, described by BBC Scotland and others as ‘controversial’ at the time. Imagine it had been the other way round?

Second, looking at the graph, the Cons and Labour increasingly drove people to drink and the SNP, from 2007, began to create a better land where many felt less need to resort to it. To cries from the opposition that other factors must have been responsible, I reply ‘If it was the other way round, who would you blame?’

Third, young folk too are less likely to drink too much under SNP Government and we know from election data and polls, to this day, that they like the SNP more than any other group.