Getting the facts right with Tim Stockwell

Neo-temperance activist-academic Tim Stockwell has been talking to the Irish media about minimum pricing...

Everyone in the alcohol research and epidemiology world pretty much agrees that MUP is probably the single most effective strategy to reduce drinking with the least downsides. In Scotland, which brought it in in 2018, alcohol consumption and deaths have already gone down.

So whatever people feel about it, I think it’s really good to get the facts straight because they’re very well researched.

 

Yes, it is very important to get the facts straight. Facts like Scotland's rate of alcohol-related mortality being at a nine year high, for example.  

 

Could more expensive booze lead to people drinking cheaper liquids, like hand sanitizer or rubbing alcohol?

The studies we’ve done with people with severe alcohol use disorders show “non-beverage” is their absolute last resort. Mostly, they avoid it like the plague.

The proof in the pudding is this – you wouldn’t get the decrease in liver cirrhosis rates we see if they were just shifting their drinking.

 

What decrease in liver cirrhosis rates would this be? The link (which I assume Stockwell gave the journalist to insert) goes to a study from 2014, four years before minimum pricing was tried anywhere. Its lead author is MUP campaigner Nick Sheron and all it did was look at how much some heavy drinkers who had liver cirrhosis spent on alcohol and work out how much more they would spend under minimum pricing. It didn't even model the impact on liver cirrhosis rates. 

 

Facts, eh?