5.Conclusions
Minimum unit pricing in the UK would have immediate and also delayed health, crime and economic benefits. The Sheffield model’s estimates of the extent of these benefits have been criticized but recent Canadian research confirms the Sheffield model has produced highly conservative estimates of changes in consumption and alcohol‐related harm. Benefits would
Be experienced most by those population groups and in regions of the country where rates of hazardous and harmful drinking are the highest. Much of the harm associated with alcohol use is experienced by family members of heavy drinkers and they too would experience health and safety benefits from MUP. Substitution of cheap alternative sources of alcohol would only occur
To a small degree and only slightly offset the larger population wide benefits. The broad social and economic benefits from reduced health and crime costs mean that many stand to gain from the introduction of MUP.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Katherine Brown, John Holmes and Daniel Hill--‐McManus for advice on earlier drafts of this manuscript.
About the authors
Dr Tim Stock well is the Director of the Centre for Addictions Research of BC and Professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He obtained degrees in Psychology and Philosophy from the University of Oxford, a Ph.D. from the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London and is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
He has worked as a researcher and psychologist in the UK, Australia and now Canada. His main research interests concern policies to prevent and reduce harms from the use of psychoactive
substances. He has over 300 publications, has authored several books and holds editorial positions with the journals Addiction and the Drug and Alcohol Review. He is the principal investigator on a grant from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research entitled “Does minimum pricing reduce the burden of injury and illness attributable to alcohol?”. He was also a member of the scientific advisory board for the first University of Sheffield alcohol policy modeling project.
Dr Gerald Thomas is a Collaborating Scientist with the Centre for Addictions Research of BC. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Colorado State University in 1998 and has worked in the area of Canadian alcohol policy since 2004. He served on the secretariat of the National Alcohol Strategy Working Group which created Canada’s first national alcohol
strategy in 2007, and collaborated with the Chief Medical Officer of Health in BC, Perry Kendall and others at CARBC on A Public Health Approach to Alcohol Policy for British Columbia (2008)