WHO concludes there’s “no place for cheap alcohol”

In late June 2022, World Health Organization Europe published a handbook on minimum pricing policies for alcohol.1 As described by one of the authors,2 the report is “everything you wanted to know about minimum pricing, in one place.”

Minimum pricing for alcohol sets a fixed price for a given volume (or number of standard drinks or units, in the case of minimum unit pricing), below which alcoholic drinks cannot be sold.

The new report summarises the evidence for minimum unit pricing: indirect evidence supporting the underlying theory; modelling studies; and direct evidence from evaluation studies. Six common objections to minimum pricing policies are tackled, including whether a minimum price is unfair to people on lower incomes. The rest of the report focuses on practical and legal issues, implementation, and evaluation, and how minimum pricing can complement alcohol taxes.

Like the systematic and rapid reviews before it,34 WHO’s report, No Place for Cheap Alcohol, concludes that …