Optimism as alcohol deaths level-off for third year in a row after minimum unit pricing enters fourth year but media try to scare us with out-of-date figures before a fall anticipated this year

Professor John Robertson OBA

Specially plucked out by the Reporting Scotland team and other MSM, not on their website, the above carefully selected statistic – an increase of jut ONE and not the trend they hope to imply.

Looking at the other media reports we see they’re based on the 2023 data reported by the National Records of Scotland published in September 2024.1

We won’t have the 2024 data until September 2025.

Here’s the trend:

There were 1,277 alcohol-specific deaths registered in Scotland in 2023, an increase of one death from 2022. This is the highest number of alcohol-specific deaths registered in a year since 2008

I see a clear levelling-off in the trend after the the Minimum Unit Pricing Act was implemented in 2018. The trend suggests a fall in the 2024 rate.

10 thoughts on “Optimism as alcohol deaths level-off for third year in a row after minimum unit pricing enters fourth year but media try to scare us with out-of-date figures before a fall anticipated this year”

  1. Good Morning Scotland has been particularly bad this week with bad story after bad depicting Scotland as a truly terrible place to live. I’d like to suggest you are never too old to start up an alternative radio station we can all tune into to kickstart our day in a more positive fashion. My only comfort after my hourly penance each morning is that you (or others here) will soon provide some facts and analysis to the GMS stories. Please don’t retire just yet!

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    3. So it should be called BAD morning Scotland, bad bad bad. makes you wonder why many folks from over the border choose to retire in Scotland, I mean as I have said, clean water, free prescriptions, free bus pass at age 60, (not so in England, it’s not until aged 66 for my friends in Northumberland!) well functioning NHS, and now of course due to climate change, winters are warmer so…what’s not to like.

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  2. If BBCScotland ( GMS and Reporting Scotland and …) were subject to actual commercial rules , dependent on audience figures , then it would have died out naturally years ago .

    As it is , it is maintained as a publicly funded propaganda outlet to support the Westminster media stranglehold on a precious colony .

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    1. Indeed, and of course the BBC in Scotland doing the English establishments’ dirty work for them. It is the case that the license money taken form people in Scotland is far more than is spent on anything Scotland related in Scotland, people are paying for their day in day out propaganda, though those paying the license charges may be dwindling fast now.

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  3. From April 4, published by the Nuffield Trust: ‘Deaths from drinking are at a record high: does England need a new alcohol strategy?’ (https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/deaths-from-drinking-are-at-a-record-high-does-england-need-a-new-alcohol-strategy )

    ‘But deaths from alcohol are up – substantially: In 2023 there were 8,274 deaths in England from conditions caused entirely by alcohol consumption, which include alcoholic liver disease and accidental poisoning. This represents an increase of over 60% since records began in 2006. A further 14,370 deaths in 2023 were from conditions caused partially by alcohol.’

    There is no levelling off in England in the Trust’s chart ‘The number of alcohol-specific deaths in England over time’. 5,819 alcohol deaths in 2019 rising to 8,274 in 2023.

    I note in the Scotland Politics section of the BBC News website an article with this headline: ‘Deaths in Scottish prisons among highest in Europe’. it details comparative statistics on prison deaths for Scotland and England & Wales. Curiously, no data for ‘Europe’ given the headline!

    As with drug deaths, it seems that cross UK statistical comparisons are only considered newsworthy by BBC Scotland when the performance stats for Scotland can be presented as worse than our neighbours.

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  4. O/T

    MSM Monitor has posted a video of a speaker (Delegate) at the STUC Conference who told Anas Sarwar and Labour a few home truths on Grangemouth.

    The Morning Star also noted this in their headline:

    “Scottish Labour leader’s ‘shameless opportunism’ slammed”

    The delegate stated this:

    “As I stand here, workers at Grangemouth — my friends and my colleagues — will walk out for the last time as over a century of oil refining comes to an end,”

    ‘”It’s a private business, there’s nothing we can do, it’s a commercial decision’ — that’s what they’ve been telling us, and yet everything we called for has happened, just not at Grangemouth”

    (He, the delegate, means Sarwar as that was his excuse to Colin Mackay STV News when he was challenged by Colin on not saving jobs at Grangemouth refinery as he promised pre the 2024 GE, Sarwar just kept repeating “It’s a private company” – however it was also a “private company” when Sarwar said Labour would save the jobs there during his GE campaign in 2024).

    “We welcome the intervention at the steelworks at Scunthorpe. For us, this is not site versus site, or workers versus worker — for us it’s certainly not either/or”.

    “Yet that is exactly what this UK Labour government has done. They have supported one site while turning their back on another”

    “In a blistering attack on Mr Sarwar, he continued”:

    “They will point to the £200 million national wealth fund — in fact Anas Sarwar did so in this very room today — but let me put the record straight”

    “Not one job of my colleagues, not one single job at that refinery will be saved through this intervention, so for Anas or anyone else to suggest otherwise is simply disgraceful“

    “They are even trying to take credit for the redundancy deal negotiated between this union and the employer — shameless opportunism“!

    “At Grangemouth, we have become used to the endless peddling of rubbish from political leaders, ‘we would step in and save the jobs’ — do you remember that one“?

    “Those were the words of Anas Sarwar on national television“

    “He (Sarwar) now seems to have forgotten what he said on Grangemouth, but let me say here today: the workers of Grangemouth, I can assure him, haven’t forgotten — nor will they forgive”

    “Have others sat on their hands? Of course they have, and not least the Scottish government, but the reality is that Labour is now in charge.

    “Are Labour going to sit on their hands, or will they finally stand up and keep Grangemouth working”.

    The delegate got a very good response and applause.

    Good to know that there are some who, like us on here, identified that Sarwar made pledges to Grangemouth prior to the 2024 UK GE which neither he nor Labour UK delivered upon for Grangemouth while they , Labour UK, did deliver for Scunthorpe (what with the May local elections coming up in England).

    Also good to know that this delegate sees that “the reality is that Labour is now in charge” even though he also cast aspersions upon the Scottish government who he said also “sat on their hands”.

    So then it seems that we now once again must go back to the real problem which is always somehow forgotten by so many, which is that our Scottish government is not one that governs an independent country, where all powers, control, decisions and importantly all money is available to them as a government.

    A government who runs a country that is independent then has the ability , the powers and significantly the money to protect and save industries and jobs in it’s own country, That is not what Scotland has.

    This delegate also noted that it was mentioned that Grangemouth was owned by a “private company” and that situation BTW was not because of the current Scottish government but that was an action by Westminster who tied their own hands when it gave Grangemouth to the private sector.

    Also the current Labour UK government , based, as a UK government at Westminster, provided a £600 million guarantee to Jim Ratcliffe’s “Private” company, INEOS, to build a large petrochemical plant in, checks notes, Antwerp.

    The First Minister John Swinney had also announced an additional £25 million to establish a fund to help secure the future of Grangemouth.

    How Anas Sarwar had the brass neck to show his face at the STUC Conference and make a speech is evidence as to how he, as a Labour politician, has no shame or regret in him lying to and betraying workers at Grangemouth.

    Vote SNP in 2026 or expect to see even more lies and betrayal unfold via Anas Sarwar as his Labour party political campaigns are strong on slogans but not so strong on delivering what the slogans promised they would deliver.

    Labour “Change” = literally a change of party as the new UK government so formerly it was a Tory UK government and now it is a Labour one- tick

    Labour “New Direction” – literally means if Labour were in power then they would (obviously) go in a different (New) direction from the SNP who were the previous Scottish government – tick

    So really take the (Labour) slogan as literal… but , as a slogan, it has no real substance to it at all.

    If Change (for the better) had really happened with Labour UK then why have Labour in Scotland now dropped it as their main slogan, now it’s “New Direction” for the 2026 Scottish elections, which is also open to interpretation, or rather, open to abuse with Labour.

    Labour who just cannot be trusted to either “change” as a party or indeed for them as a potential new Scottish government to take Scotland in any direction other than the wrong direction which would indeed be a “New Direction” compared to the SNP who have always taken us, within Scotland, in the right direction).

    Liz S

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    1. Well I’d say re the lection next year the SNP need some damn clever slogans because that’s what the LabCons et al rely on for their campaigns, especially in Scotland and the Brit state I’m sure have some staff working on their propaganda slogans every day…

      ‘New direction’? OK, what about ONE direction like the name of that band years ago, because the LabCons will take Scotland in ONE DIRECTION and that will be backwards at best, probably much ‘worse’ as Starmer told us all a few months back and he wasn’t kidding was he. .

      So, SNP, posters saying something like, Labour will take Scotland in ONE DIRECTION and that will be 100% backwards. Vote for a forward looking, life affirming fair and equal country, only a vote for the SNP can carry those qualities and policies forward, for Scotland’s future, for your children and grandchildren.

      How does that sound.

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