Our policy on alcohol
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Get in touch with our policy team to find out more information about our work and our policies.
Alcohol is known to cause seven types of cancer, including two of the most common cancers, breast and bowel. The more a person drinks the greater their risk of cancer: whatever a person’s drinking habits, cutting down will reduce the risk of cancer. Therefore, reducing the number of people who drink at harmful levels is important for reducing the number of avoidable cancer cases throughout the UK.
Marketing restrictions to reduce alcohol consumption
The UK and devolved governments should introduce restrictions on alcohol marketing to protect children and vulnerable people. They should also hand responsibility for ensuring alcohol marketing practices adhere to higher standards to an independent body with no links to the alcohol or advertising industries.
Alcohol marketing contributes to alcohol use being seen as a normal and even an essential part of everyday life in the UK. 68% of alcohol industry sales revenue in the UK comes from people drinking above recommended levels. Restrictions on alcohol marketing would be an effective way to help reduce harm from alcohol.
Alcohol marketing is currently subject to a mix of advertising codes, either wholly or partially regulated by the alcohol industry. These codes are inadequate as they fail to protect children from being exposed to large amounts of alcohol marketing. Sporting events, popular with children, whether televised or otherwise, fall outside the scope of existing advertising regulatory guidance and expose children to alcohol marketing and advertising.
Minimum Unit Pricing to reduce alcohol harm
The UK Government should follow the successful approach in Scotland and Wales and introduce minimum unit pricing (MUP) in England.
Evaluation of the implementation of MUP in Scotland shows it has had a positive impact on health outcomes there, including an estimated 13% reduction in alcohol attributed deaths. But it could have an even bigger impact if the 50p per unit rate, set a decade ago, was increased to 65p – as now proposed by the Scottish Government itself. MUP is one of the most effective and cost-effective tools that can be employed to reduce alcohol harm, but should also be part of a wider package of measures governments implement.
Alcohol Health Alliance
The Alcohol Health Alliance is a coalition of more than 60 organisations, including Cancer Research UK, working together to reduce the harm caused by alcohol. Reducing the number of alcohol attributable cancer cases will mean implementing comprehensive policy measures which reduce the availability, marketing and affordability of alcohol.
We support the Alcohol Health Alliance’s key policy recommendations for the UK Government to reduce harm from alcohol. These include:
- Introducing minimum unit pricing for alcohol in England, to prevent the sale of ultra-cheap high strength drinks that lead to high social costs.
- Ensuring alcohol duty at least keeps pace with inflation and that all stronger products are always taxed at a higher rate than lower strength products.
- Mandatory alcohol product labelling that provides consumers with information relating to ingredients, calories, units, the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines and health risks such as alcohol during pregnancy and cancer.
- Inclusion of ‘public health’ as a licensing objective in England so that licensing bodies must consider local alcohol harm data when making their decisions.
- Committing to long-term funding of proven and cost-effective early interventions and alcohol treatment services across the UK