posted on 2025-05-09, 10:38authored byJim McCambridge, Kypros Kypri, Colin Drummond, John Strang
The Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy for England, published a decade ago, was at that time criticised as being “a recipe for ineffectiveness…a textbook case of how industry interests can be brought to bear, through an ideologically friendly central government”. The key criticism was that evidence-based policies of demonstrated effectiveness were ignored in favour of policies preferred by the alcohol industry. The resulting mix of approaches—industry self-regulation, targeting binge drinkers with largely punitive responses, public information, and school-based education—has not reduced alcohol harms. In fact, the situation has continued to worsen in England, with rates of alcohol-related hospital admissions approximately doubling within one decade. Other key indicators such as liver disease death rates have also risen markedly, during a period in which they have been falling in many other western European countries.