Chase: The health lobby has got it wrong on alcohol statistics

20-Jun-2012 - Last updated on 12-Mar-2017 at 03:00 GMT

Chase: "Professor Sir Ian Gilmore's viewpoint suffers from the not inconsiderable disadvantage of being wrong"

If anyone was unconvinced that alcohol has become the ‘new tobacco’, the latest demands of Professor Gilmore and the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) should dispel any remaining doubt.

The alliance’s submission to the House of Commons Select Committee on health claims that alcohol is responsible for 15,000 deaths a year — that’s nearly 8,500 more than claimed by the latest NHS Information Centre compendium of alcohol statistics. But why quibble over such minor inconsistencies?

Professor Gilmore wants a complete ban on TV advertising of alcohol and an end to the sponsorship of sporting events by drinks companies, in order to “protect children and teenagers”. He further suggests that “extreme measures” are needed to “reset society’s norms” to protect children from marketing messages that glamorise drinking and fuel excess consumption.

He said: “We know that young people are heavily affected by advertising and marketing. The evidence shows that when children are exposed to adverts they tend to drink at an earlier age, to drink more, and are more likely to end up developing a problem with alcohol in later life.” He also called for a minimum unit price of 50p to be introduced and then revised “at least annually”.

Furthermore, a levy should be imposed on any windfall profits this might generate for the drinks industry — to be spent on alcohol treatment services. Phew! Anything else?

I am somewhat bemused why anyone should think that being a liver specialist makes Professor Gilmore an expert on the impact of advertising and sports sponsorship on young people; an expert on economics, and hence able to predict the impact of minimum pricing on consumer conduct; an expert on social engineering, and therefore able to pontificate on how social policy might enable Government to “reset society’s norms” — assuming, of course, that he is able in the first place to define what those are. Clearly, he must regard himself a true polymath — a ‘Professor of Everything’.
But what are we to make of these claims that children exposed to alcohol ad-verts tend to drink earlier and more? As compared to whom — children who aren’t ex-posed to alcohol adverts? Have we identified a cohort of UK children who have escaped the pervasive influences of the alcohol advertisers — and do they behave differently? If not, just what is the comparator? And advertising that glamorises drinking and fuels excess consumption?

Well, the industry has a strict advertising code operated by the Portman Group. If Professor Gilmore would like to identify which adverts he believes glamorise drinking, I’m sure Portman will be pleased to hear from him. Otherwise, it’s just another unsupported claim.

The health committee should balance Gilmore’s views by considering the following key facts:

11% is the fall in alcohol consumption between 2004 and 2010.
11.9 units is the overall average weekly consumption of alcohol per head for men and women combined.
16.3 units is the average consumption per week for men.
Eight units is the average consumption per week for women.
13% is the proportion of school pupils who drank alcohol in the last week — half what it was in 2001.
55% is the proportion of 11 to 15-year-olds who had never consumed alcohol in 2010.
16 is the average number of people convicted per year of purchasing alcohol for underage drinkers between 2005 and 2009.
60% is the fall in the number of convictions for selling alcohol to underage drinkers since 2005.
34 is the total number of people who were prosecuted in England and Wales between 2005 and 2009 for selling alcohol to drunks; an average of seven per year. Only 15 people have been prosecuted since 2005.
14th out of 31 countries — the UK’s ranking for alcohol consumption.
15th out of 28 countries — the UK’s ranking for deaths from chronic alcoholic liver disease.

Professor Gilmore’s basic argument rests on the ‘whole population’ ap-proach to alcohol harm reduction. His viewpoint is that alcohol-related harm can only be reduced by suppressing the mass market for alcohol.

This viewpoint suffers from the not inconsiderable disadvantage of being wrong. As alcohol consumption has declined, alcohol-related harms have risen, not fallen.

The Professor of Everything and the AHA have invested so much political and intellectual capital getting it wrong, that admitting their mistakes would involve a loss of face of epic proportions and they just can’t do it. Not since the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union published ‘scientific temperance’ textbooks for American school children, back in the 1890s, have we seen such misrepresentation, distortion, selective quoting of statistics and the ignoring of arguments to the contrary — all wrapped in the spurious authority of a white coat and stethoscope.

When we are witness to such distortions from those who should know better, it is difficult not to reach the conclusion that these are the rantings of fundamentally unhappy people. If I was an expert in psychiatry I might diagnose extreme paranoia.