BMJ  2007;335:1271-1272 (22 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39426.523715.80

Editorials

Reducing the harms of alcohol in the UK

Successful policies have worked elsewhere, so delays in implementing them are costing lives

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Alcohol causes major health problems—the Cabinet Office reported up to 150 000 hospital admissions and 15 000-22 000 deaths overall in 2003.¹ Between 1991 and 2005, deaths directly attributed to alcohol almost doubled.² More people are dying from alcohol related causes than from breast cancer, cervical cancer, and infection with methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus combined. Furthermore, the recent report from the World Cancer Research fund confirmed that even drinking alcohol within so called "safe limits" increases the risk of cancer of the breast and upper gastrointestinal tract.³

The cultural and sociological factors that determine our patterns of drinking may date back thousands of years.⁴ As such, the Licensing Act 2005 was always unlikely to transform the culture of feast drinking to that of a Mediterranean society. Similarly, other options to reduce harm favoured by government and the alcohol industry—education and public information—don’t seem to change drinking behaviour or to reduce . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ Medical School, Southampton University Hospital, Southampton SO16 6YD

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