A Review of Alcohol Pricing and its Effects on Alcohol Consumption and Alcohol-Related Harm

摘要

Alcohol has a complex relationship with any given society. On one hand, it may have some benefits by providing a means of leisure and socialization and a source of revenue through taxation of its sales while on the other hand; it has harmful effects by being a direct cause of many medical illnesses, accidents and crime.¹ The number of deaths directly related to alcohol in England in 2008 were 6,769, which is a 24% increase from 2001.² To combat this rising number of alcohol-related problems, the government has introduced various strategies and indicators in order to monitor the effectiveness of interventions. NI39 is one such national indicator for alcohol-related harm, which measures alcohol-related admissions per 100,000 populations on a quarterly and yearly basis, with the first quarter starting in April and the last quarter ending in March. This rate (NI39) for England in 2009/2010 was 1,743/100,000, which is a 10% increase from 2008/2009 statistics.³ Furthermore, the NI39 estimates for the first two quarters of 2010/11 are about 942/100,000, predicting a 9% further increase from previous year.⁴ In addition, there was an average of 271 alcohol dependence-related prescriptions in England per 100,000 in 2009, costing the National Health Service about ￡2.38 million.⁵ Hence, we can see that the burden of alcohol misuse in England is huge, making it a priority problem in public health. According to the economics, the demand of a product is inversely proportional to its price, which means that an increase in the price of a product will decrease its demand and vice versa. Alcohol now is 70% more affordable than it was in 1980⁵ , which may be related to increasing alcohol misuse. Therefore, pricing has been regarded as one of the central tools in alcohol policy. ⁶ On 18^th January 2011, the government set a minimum price of alcohol for England and Wales⁷ resulting in a great amount of discussion on the effects of alcohol price, alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm. This paper aims to review the current literature and to examine the evidence for an association between alcohol price, alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm.