Assumptions mask facts in health row

Around 100,000 people are set to die in the UK as a result of drink over the next 10 years, according to the health lobby, yet latest figures show that UK alcohol consumption is falling at the fastest rate for more than 60 years, according to the British Beer & Pub Association. So who are we to believe?

As “Alcohol Awareness Week” brings us endless tales of the damage drinking can do, the fear is that sensationalist stories and exaggerated claims will further undermine the steps the industry is taking to clean up the British drinking scene.

According to the official HM Revenue & Customs data compiled by the BBPA, the amount of booze consumed in the UK fell by over 8% to 3.81 litres per head in the first half of 2009 compared with 4.15 litres per head in the same period of 2008. The last time the nation’s alcohol consumption fell by more than this was during 1948 when it fell by 11% over the course of the year.

The amount we drink has now been on a strong downward trend for four and a half years, since a peak in 2004.

On current trends, by the end of this year, the amount we drink could be down to the levels of 10 years ago – 14% on 2004.

But it wasn’t this news that Britain awoke to on Monday morning, when the BBPA figures were released. Rather, headlining that morning was the news from the Alcohol & Health Research Unit at the University of the West of England that alcohol-related deaths have trebled in the past 25 years to reach 8,999 last year.

With alcohol now firmly established as the pet hate of news desks across the country, we should not be surprised that they chose to jump on the most dramatic headline. However, while nobody can claim that drinking is a path to a long, healthy life, some of the claims made this week by the health brigade have been little short of staggering in their naivety.

First up we had Professor Ian Gilmore, one of the nation’s leading experts on liver damage, claiming that mothers who enjoy a glass of wine as a way to wind-down as they juggle career and family were drinking themselves into the path of a “health timebomb”.

He said: “Women in their role as mother or carer use alcohol to cope with exhaustion, anxiety, isolation and with stressful life events. Alcohol is a sedative and a relaxant but used on a regular basis can really put people at high risk. Women are storing up a health timebomb by drinking this regularly. My fear is that such women are at risk of developing liver disease or becoming alcohol-dependent.”

Of course women would be in dangerous territory were they to be tucking away a whole bottle each and every afternoon, but there’s no mention in Gilmore’s words of excessive drinking. In his view, it seems, just the one glass is enough to signify a potentially dangerous addiction to plonk.

In a time when the pressures on mums across the UK is at its most intense – due in no small part to rising school fees, reduced disposable income and the increasing tendency for mothers to hold down a job as well as raise a family – Gilmore’s suggestion that they are alcoholics just for wanting a glass of wine at the end of a day seems a little unfair.

Then we had the Department of Health seemingly, if newspapers are to be believed, blaming alcohol for fuelling a liver disease crisis among middle-aged Britons, citing the fact that the average age of those dying of the disease has fallen to 60 for women and 58 for men – four years lower for both sexes than 25 years ago.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but liver disease can be caused by any one of a great number of factors, including infection, injury, exposure to toxic compounds, an autoimmune process, or a genetic defect. Why, then, must alcohol instantly be assumed to be the root cause of it all? While the DoH did not say directly in the article that alcohol is fuelling the rise in liver disease, the newspapers jumped all over it.

One suggests they might want to check their facts before shooting their mouths off. Once again, the quest for headlines has superseded the need for education among the British drinking classes – and even then only among the minority who drink to excess.

Then we have to deal with the contradictions in the data. With over four years of falling consumption, the academic theories in the government’s much quoted ‘Sheffield Study’ can now be tested against experience in the real world.

According to the Sheffield calculations, the fall in consumption of over 6% between 2004 and 2008 should have resulted in around 20,000 fewer alcohol-related hospital admissions in 2008 and on current trends, around 50,000 fewer admissions this year. Yet the reports we regularly receive from the medical profession suggest rising hospital admissions.

Something isn’t working. The theory of reducing everyone’s drinking to tackle alcohol harm does not seem to be working in practice and the BBPA suggests targeted policies would be more effective.

Despite this, the government continues to press ahead with a wide range of measures designed to control alcohol consumption at national level, such as proposals for a mandatory code for pubs, contained in the Policing & Crime Bill, which could cost the industry £300 million at a time when many pubs are facing closure.

Brigid Simmonds, BBPA chief executive, said: “Alcohol consumption is not increasing. It has been on a firm downward trend for several years. When it comes to effective policies to tackle alcohol harm, we need a debate based on the real facts.

 
“We can now test the academic theories and models, because we now have real life experience of falling total consumption. As doctors keep telling us things are getting worse, these figures cast severe doubt on the claims often made that the best policies for reducing alcohol harm are those that reduce everyone’s drinking.
 
“In reality, alcohol policies designed to reduce drinking in the whole population are misguided. Controls on the total amount we drink will not work. What we need is a new debate about effective policy measures that are clearly targeted at the minority who misuse alcohol. Our industry is open to that debate and wants to be part of the solution.”

Yet the fear is that for as long as alcohol is demonised as the root of all evil, the trade will be marginalised by the decision-makers to the extent that they will barely pay us any attention at all.

Alan Lodge, 21.10.2009