Scotsman Daily Bulletin Wednesday 30 August

The Scotsman

Transcript

00:00 Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin for Wednesday. I'm Alan Young, I'm

00:07 Deputy Editor of the Scotsman. I'm joined today by our health correspondent Joseph Anderson

00:11 to take a look at some of the headlines. Hi Joseph.

00:14 Morning Alan, how's things?

00:15 Good. Let's have a look at the front page first off. We lead today on Joseph's story

00:22 and this is around the death toll from alcohol in Scotland. The headline stat yesterday were

00:30 that deaths from alcohol abuse have reached their highest level in 14 years. Very worrying

00:38 indeed and we will talk to Joseph about that in just a minute. Also though, in today's

00:44 edition we have a fantastic feature from our transport correspondent, Alasdair Dalton.

00:50 It is plugged at the top of the page there. He went bikepacking. Find out what that's

00:57 all about in today's paper. We also have a full preview of a massive game in Europe tonight

01:04 for Rangers when they take on PSV looking to get into the Champions League group stages.

01:10 But Joseph, the drink stats really were the big story yesterday and you've delved into

01:16 it today. Just quickly give us an update on what the stats showed.

01:22 Well firstly, they've been increasing over the last decade. There was a small period,

01:27 I think from 2006 to 2012, where the drink deaths were actually going down. Now they've

01:33 risen to over 1,200 people dying every year. These are the highest stats in 14 years now.

01:41 What it's done is it's cast some doubt over some of the Scottish Government's interventionist

01:45 policies such as minimum unit pricing. They've now got two choices essentially. Either it

01:53 is effective but it's not effective enough and they're going to have to double down,

01:58 they're going to have to increase the base rate, they're going to have to make alcohol

02:01 even more expensive, or it is completely ineffective. It's not reducing drink deaths at all and

02:09 they're going to have to scrap it. So that's the sort of choice that the Government has

02:13 now. It's either stick or twist.

02:17 And just to remind people, this comes not so long after the Scottish Government was

02:22 trumpeting a report which showed that their controversial policy, I think it's fair to

02:27 say, of introducing a minimum price for alcohol had actually led to deaths going down and

02:35 hospital admissions dropping. The Scottish Government yesterday would point to the figures

02:41 and say, well this just shows that we need to increase the minimum unit pricing because

02:48 deaths would have been even worse. But that's not a view shared by everyone.

02:52 Now there's a lot of industry figures who are against MUP from the start. The Scottish

02:58 Conservatives as well are also very anti-interventionist when it comes to markets anyway. It does all

03:05 rely on Public Health Scotland's meta-analysis of 40 independent studies. They are the ones

03:13 who then came out and said this has saved 150 lives each year, it's reduced hospitalisations

03:21 by X amount as well. It's really a question of how much trust the Scottish Government

03:26 now puts in that report, showing that it reduced hundreds of deaths.

03:33 And as you've hinted, opposition politicians are calling for a complete rethink, and a

03:40 rethink in the way that we tackle Scotland's alcohol problem.

03:46 Yes, there's a whole industry dedicated to rehabilitation and recovery, ranging from

03:55 complete abstinence all the way to cutting down and talking therapies. MUP isn't the

04:03 only way that the Scottish Government could attack these deaths. For example, yesterday

04:09 they hinted that they're going to look again at a ban on alcohol advertisements.

04:17 Which is likely to be just as controversial, you would think, when there are calls to really

04:24 look at the root causes and to recognise that most alcohol deaths happen in impoverished

04:34 areas and that tackling poverty is potentially the most effective way to get on top of this

04:41 problem, and perhaps even to a certain extent the drugs deaths crisis, which we're also

04:46 dealing with.

04:48 Yes, well the death statistics, if you plot them on a graph, they rise from the 90s all

04:56 the way up to around 2006, and then they take a dramatic drop and then they rise again to

05:03 what they are today. Now the reason is because in 2008 there was a recession and poverty

05:10 and wealth inequality increased. As we started to see the effects of that on drinking and

05:19 on poverty, the deaths started rising again. So it does seem to clearly correlate with

05:25 how the economy is doing, but the problem is it's easier said than done to recover an

05:32 economy.

05:33 Indeed, I'm sure the debate on this issue is going to continue for some time, not least

05:40 because, as you mentioned, the government have a big decision to make on whether to

05:46 increase the minimum unit price. Thanks very much for that. Joseph, please keep an eye

05:51 on scottsman.com throughout the day. Do subscribe if you can, then you will not miss a thing.

05:56 And if you're out and about today, please do pick up a copy of the paper from me and

06:00 from Joseph. It's bye for now.

06:02 Bye.

06:02 [END]

06:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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