Alcohol minimum unit price increase receives cross party support

A SCOTS alcohol awareness charity has said a rise to minimum unit pricing is needed as Scotland is in an “alcohol crises.”

The Health, Social Care and Sport Committee met at Holyrood this morning to discuss raising minimum unit pricing to 65p to keep up with rises in inflation.

MUP was brought in at 50p per unit in 2018 to tackle cheap, high ABV drinks that were in part associated for poor health.

Charity Alcohol Focus Scotland have campaigned to reduce the harm that alcohol has in Scottish society and are long time supporters of minimum unit pricing.

Nicola Mellin, policy and research at Alcohol Focus Scotland, said: “We’ve already seen the benefits of MUP [since it was introduced].

“There’s an evaluation from Public Health Scotland showing that [alcohol related] deaths are 13% lower than they would have been without MUP.

“We need the increase to make sure this keeps working and this is to make good on inflation and to continue to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on drinking.

“We’re in an alcohol crises right now, the pandemic has led to higher risk drinkers increasing how much they’re drinking and we’ve seen a massive impact on health.”

The charity acknowledged that the MUP is not a “silver bullet” policy and that more will need to be done to address alcohol problems in Scotland.

Mellin added: “Scotland has a really significant problem with alcohol so one policy is not going to fix that.

“We need to address the marketing of alcohol, when children are exposed to alcohol marketing they’re more likely to drink earlier and their more likely to drink more, that’s one of the key issues we want to see looked at.”

The motion passed with a support of eight in favour, two against and no abstentions with support across SNP, Labour and Greens.

Minister for drugs and alcohol policy, Christina McKelvie, said: “I am clear that minimum unit pricing is a significant part of the Scottish Government’s approach to tackling alcohol related harm, however, it is not a silver bullet.”

McKelvie added: “For some findings in the Public Health Scottish evaluation it was clear that people who were alcohol dependent had experienced additional challenges linked to the price of alcohol.

“To this end, the Scottish Government has provided a record funding of £112m this year for Scotland’s alcohol and drug partnerships.”