Don't look at the deaths! Minimum pricing in Wales

Minimum pricing in Wales has been a failure. It was introduced in April 2020 and was therefore confounded by the pandemic, but the rise in alcohol-specific deaths in Wales during Covid was statistically indistinguishable from that of England (and smaller than that of Scotland, which has had minimum pricing since 2018). Anyone who reads the official evaluation in full will be left in no doubt that it failed to achieve its objective while creating negative consequences in a highly predictable way.

It takes a lot to put lipstick on this pig, but Colin Angus and colleagues have had a go with this new study. Colin Angus, you may fondly recall, is a long-standing member of the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group that has earned a small fortune in government grants to produce worthless modelling for this policy.

His new study is careful to ignore mortality. The only mention of death comes when he falsely claims that Scotland saw "a 13.4 % reduction in alcohol-specific deaths" after minimum pricing was introduced. Instead, he reckons there has been a decline in the sale of alcohol sales and that there have been "substantial effects amongst some drinkers, showcasing the policy's effectiveness in discouraging purchases of cheap, high-strength beverages".

 

The study concludes that the MUP in Wales has successfully reduced alcohol purchases and consumption of high-strength alcohol, in a way that is consistent with what we would expect, with the biggest impacts on products such as cider that are bought disproportionately by heavier drinkers.

 

So why did the number of deaths shoot up? Could it be that 'public health' dogma is wrong? The pandemic proved, in all sorts of ways, that it is.

 

In the abstract's conclusion (but, interestingly, not in the study itself) a further claim is made:

 

MUP in Wales changed purchasing behaviour, which should lead to public health benefits in the longer term.

 

Here we see the goalposts shifting. If the benefits are in the long-term then we shouldn't expect to see anything in the short-term. And yet we were very definitely and explicitly told to expect benefits almost immediately. That was the message of at least three modelling studies the Sheffield team conducted for the Welsh government. The most recent of these was published in 2018 and clearly showed a reduction in mortality in the first year which increases over time.

We know, unequivocally, that alcohol-related deaths did not fall. They rose. And yet we are told that alcohol consumption fell and that the sale of strong booze declined. We are even told that this shows that minimum pricing in Wales has been a success.

Pandemic or not, that is the elephant in the room. There are three possible explanations. Either Angus's data is wrong and sales didn't decline, or high-strength alcohol isn't linked to alcohol-specific deaths, or minimum pricing didn't reduce alcohol consumption amongst people who are prone to dying from alcohol abuse. I find the last of these by far the most persuasive, but 'public health' dogma insists that what matters is overall alcohol consumption and the overall consumption of high-strength products in particular. It is a false assumption and models based on false assumptions are bound to be wrong.

Speaking of models...

 

The findings suggest potential applicability of a similar policy for products with analogous issues, such as certain high-sugar foods.

 

Is that a fresh grift I see on the horizon?

Europuppets revisited

Back in 2013, I wrote a report titled Euro Puppets: The European Commission’s remaking of civil society which gave chapter and verse on the EU's epic funding of NGOs and pressure groups. The UK did this too but the EU's sockpuppetry was on another level. It struck me as a scandal but I didn't expect anything to be done about it and nothing was. 

The issue has bubbled up again in recent months, as I explain at The Critic...

 

This looked like it would continue forever, but last November the European Commission told NGOs that LIFE, a €5.4 billion slush fund for environmental projects, could no longer be used to lobby the EU. LIFE grants could still be used for “policy briefs or other research papers” and for “workshops, conferences, trainings or awareness raising campaigns”, but if they wanted to hob-nob with policy-makers they would have to do so on their own time. Last week, the German MEP Monika Hohlmeier said that “EU funds must be spent on clearly defined objectives that are in line with EU legislation” and that “we must be able to track the transparency of how the money is spent.”

These are pretty modest requirements when large sums of public money is being given to third parties, but it is a big deal in Brussels where, incredibly, some NGOs have been required to sign an agreement promising to lobby MEPs in order to get their grant. According to an investigation by the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, the European Environmental Bureau, which received €1,955,910 in EU grants last year, “was explicitly tasked with providing at least 16 examples where the European Parliament made green legislation more ambitious thanks to their lobbying efforts.” That is the name of the game with sockpuppet funding. The whole point is to amplify the most extreme voices so that the government’s position looks moderate by comparison. 

Needless to say, the prospect of having to use their own money to lobby politicians sent the environmental blob into a frenzy. BirdLife Europe, which received a €460,000 LIFE grant last year, called it “a dangerous challenge to democracy”. The aforementioned European Environmental Bureau yelped that it was an “orchestrated attempt to muzzle democracy” and “reminiscent of many authoritarians’ playbooks”. The director of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) European Policy Programme, which relieved EU institutions of €957,121 last year, said that the handouts were “vital for the survival of a thriving democracy”. 

They would, wouldn’t they?

 

Read it all.

The Food Foundation's dodgy data

The Food Foundation has been claiming that healthy food is insanely expensive again. Their latest factoid is that it costs £8.80 per 1,000 calories! 

I have written about this for The Critic...

 

There are two problems with this, or at least with the Food Foundation’s interpretation of it. The first is the use of averages. Aside from the questionable use of the median rather than the mean average, the average price of various foods has little practical relevance to people who go shopping. It is certainly possible to spend stupid money on sun-dried tomatoes, exotic fruit, bags of salad and anything with the word “organic” on it. Supermarkets provide many options for the health-conscious consumer who has more money than sense, and they all help to lift the average. But the existence of a wide range of expensive healthy food does not mean that “low-income families are being priced out of being able to afford to eat healthily”, as the BBC claims. You can get a thousand calories from apples for £4.40 and a thousand calories from bananas for £1.30. This is a far cry from the £10.10 average reported in the study. Admittedly, it will cost you £12.50 to get a thousand calories from curly kale, and if you want to get them from celery it will be almost impossible, physically and financially, but that is one reason why those vegetables are considered healthy — they won’t make you fat.

That brings us to the second problem with the calculation. There is a tautological aspect to it. Energy dense food is “less healthy” by definition. The Nutrient Profiling Model, which is what is being used here, gives a food a lower score if it has a certain number of calories, and the more calories it has, the lower the score. It loses points for having too much sugar, salt and fat as well, but calories themselves are part of the grading system. If you then define a food as cheap or expensive based on how much it costs to buy a certain number of calories, low-calorie food is always going to look cheaper than high-calorie food. Kale will seem cheaper than carrots and a big bag of Kettle Chips will seem cheaper than a kilo of broccoli.

Moderate drinking midwittery in the Economist

The Economist ran an article about moderate drinking a couple of weeks ago. Tediously and predictably, it revived the 'sick quitter' zombie argument and quoted Tim Stockwell as if he were the arbiter of this fake controversy. I sent a letter which has been published in the current issue. Bored of explaining the epidemiology, I thought I would mention some real science that the likes of Stockwell prefer not to discuss.

 

You suggested that moderate drinkers live longer than teetotallers because some teetotallers are “sick quitters” who wrecked their health with booze in the past (“Hard-liquor truths”, January 11th). This argument was first made in the 1980s and has been repeatedly disproved, most recently in a wide-ranging review from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that found moderate drinkers have a 16% lower rate of all-cause mortality than lifetime abstainers, which you mentioned in your leader.

One does not need to have blind faith in observational epidemiology to accept the truth of this. The review notes that randomised controlled trials have shown that “moderate drinking favourably affects HDL cholesterol, low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and apolipoprotein A-1”. It would be remarkable if this did not lead to lower heart disease and stroke risk, and it is this that explains most of the longevity gains enjoyed by moderate drinkers.

I've noticed the Economist descending into lower-midwittery recently. I can tolerate its relentless centrism and bed-wetting about 'populism' and Brexit, but I expect better from it than credulous reporting of Chris van Tulleken's claims about 'ultra-processed food' and the silly Texas sharpshooter theory about Lucy Letby. The magazine that identifies as a newspaper costs £9.99 now. Must try harder.

Minimum pricing in Wales - another fail

Minimum pricing has failed to badly in Wales that even the BBC didn't buy the government's spin when the evaluation claimed it had been a success last week.

 

A change in alcohol pricing in Wales has pushed problem drinkers away from cheap cider and towards strong spirits, a study suggests.

A minimum price of 50p per unit was introduced in Wales in March 2020.

A survey of 138 people in Wales who had sought help for problem drinking found some had swapped to "buying litres of vodka".

The report, published on Wednesday by the Welsh government, also says that some problem drinkers are going without food or heating, begging, turning to sex work, or stealing to pay for drink.

That is largely what you take away from the various reports that made up the evaluation. The claim that "the implementation of the policy has been successful" in the final report bares no relation to the evidence presented and is a cope designed to get around the sunset clause that kicks in next year.

I've written all about it for The Critic.

Ryanair's Baptists and Bootleggers booze ban

Ryanair has once again called for a two drink limit in European airports. I discuss the possible reasons for this in City AM today...

 

Now let us consider what it would take for somebody to become drunk and disorderly on a Ryanair flight. We must assume that they were not inebriated when the flight took off since Ryanair would not have allowed them to board. Something must have happened in mid-air to increase their blood alcohol level and yet passengers are not allowed to bring their own alcohol on board to drink, so it can’t be that. Maybe Ryanair makes alcohol available for passengers to buy during the flight, perhaps using some sort of trolley service?

It turns out that this is exactly what it does! Ryanair sells a range of beer, wine and spirits and has no intention of stopping. Nor does it plan to set a limit on how many drinks it sells to each passenger, regardless of the problems this may cause to airport staff and taxi drivers at the final destination. Fancy that!

 

Read it all (free).

 

The neo-temperance lobby are keen on the same policy but for different reasons...

 

An interesting proposal to limit the sale of alcohol in airports. Equally clear that harm from alcohol arises whether sold in airports, supermarkets or late night night bars. Hence restrictions on availability such as trading hours should not be relaxedhttps://t.co/dPEKlnJYSu.

— AlcoholActionIreland (@AlcoholIreland) January 13, 2025

A plan for freedom

I've written about my report, Defanging the Nanny State, which was released during the Christmas perineum, for Con Home.

It is in these first days of January that our minds turn to self-improvement. Good luck to you if you are starting a new diet or giving up smoking. The masochists among you may be abstaining from alcohol this month. Some of you may even have joined a gym.

For the killjoys in ‘public health’, this is the most wonderful time of the year. After weeks of over-indulgence, we are more susceptible to a bit of finger-wagging. In the past, the conversation would be about what we can do to make ourselves healthier. These days, it is about what the government should do to force us to be healthier.

The Alcohol Health Alliance was straight out of the blocks on New Year’s Day demanding a clampdown on booze advertising; the Obesity Health Alliance has been calling for “robust prevention measures” to protect us from “unhealthy [food] options”.

It is a bad time to propose liberalisation, but that is what I will do. With the help of European partners, I edit the Nanny State Index. It is a league table of 30 countries based on how much they over-regulate food, alcohol, soft drinks, tobacco and e-cigarettes. The UK is consistently at the wrong end of the table.

It is due to get worse thanks to the forthcoming ban on HFSS food advertising, the vape tax, incremental tobacco prohibition and other policies conceived by the last Conservative government and eagerly brought to fruition by the current Labour administration.

Another world is possible. Countries such as Germany and Luxembourg have relatively little paternalistic regulation and seem to do alright. Instead of trying to compete with Turkey and Norway to become Europe’s top nanny state, let’s try to beat Germany and be the best country for consumer freedom. What would that involve?

 

Do read the rest.

Drinkers are on notice

The US 'public health' industry is preparing the ground for a renewed assault on alcohol. The Surgeon General called for cigarette-style warnings on booze last week in a report that he put out to take people's minds off the rather more rigorous report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in December which once more confirmed that moderate drinkers live longer than teetotallers.

The ICCPUD report (Interagency Coordination Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking) is expected to strike another blow for the neo-temperance lobby. Stuffed with anti-alcohol academics, don't be surprised if it goes beyond its remit and spouts 'no safe level' dogma.

 

This all serves to grease the slippery slope. Denormalisation, here we come. And they're not even hiding it.

 

Timothy Rebbeck, Vincent L. Gregory, Jr. Professor of Cancer Prevention, told USA Today that considering putting warning labels on alcohol is just a start. He noted that after the surgeon general first warned about the dangers of smoking in 1964, it still took decades to develop strategies to curb smoking, such as limiting ads for cigarette, banning them in public spaces, and taxing them.

“It took time for people’s mindset to change and it’s going to be the same for alcohol,” he said.

 

Drinkers, you have been warned.

Mum buys son cigarettes to get him off the vapes

Remember the doctor in Australia who bought his son cigarettes to get him off the vapes? An incredible story but not impossible to believe since Australia is a cesspool of disinformation about e-cigarettes.

Now the same thing has happened in the Netherlands. The Dutch appear to be up to their necks in a similar cesspool.