Minimum pricing in the mud

It’s been a bad few days for minimum unit pricing (MUP). At the weekend, the Sunday Times revealed that Scottish civil servants had put pressure on Public Health Scotland to sex up their evaluation of the policy back in June. Today, we heard that the Scottish government has re-written its June press release, watering down strong claims about the success of minimum pricing and deleting a whole paragraph. Today also saw the publication of figures showing that the number of alcohol-specific deaths has hit a 14 year high in Scotland.

I've written about this for the Spectator and have put some more thoughts on my Substack. I won't go over all the studies in the official evaluation that failed to find a benefit from minimum pricing but there is a good summary from the charity Favor here.