Five 'public health' academics, including Niamh Fitzgerald, studied what happened to road traffic accidents (RTAs) after minimum pricing for alcohol came into effect in May 2018. As their study published last week shows, it didn't go well for them.
In Scotland, MUP implementation was associated with 40.5% (95% confidence interval: 15.5%, 65.4%) and 11.4% (−1.1%, 24.0%) increases in fatal and nighttime RTAs, respectively.
Yes, you read that correctly. There was a 40% increase in fatal road traffic accidents. The wins just keep coming, don't they?
Did minimum pricing cause the increase in fatal RTAs? Probably not, in my opinion, although the authors propose one plausible mechanism.
The increase in fatal RTAs could have multiple explanations, such as some qualitative evidence that MUP led people to switch from consuming strong beers and ciders to drinking spirits and getting more intoxicated.
The authors downplay the finding and instead settle for the inarguable conclusion that minimum pricing didn't reduce road traffic accidents.
Overall, we found no evidence that the introduction of MUP could be associated with reductions in the RTAs most likely to be alcohol-related in Scotland for the first 20 months of its implementation. This may be in contrast with the economic theory suggesting a decrease in alcohol-related RTAs as a consequence of an increase in alcohol price (that had already led to a reduction in alcohol consumption in the population).
Regular readers will be able to predict what comes next...
Overall, we found no difference in night-time RTAs and a transient increase in fatal RTAs.
Say the line, Bart!
One explanation for the lack of decrease is that the floor price of £0.50 could have been too low to generate such an effect with visible repercussions on drink-driving/pedestrian road safety and then in RTAs.
The medicine's not working. More medicine!
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