After being heavily criticised for previous attempt to impose price restrictions on alcohol in England and Wales, including on this blog, the government is now proposing introducing a minimum price. Lots of numbers are being thrown around as to what the possible effects will be, but where did they come from? Answer: ScHARR, with the economic modelling being undertaken by Alan Brennan, Robin Pursehouse and Rachid Raifa from within HEDS. The paper is available here.
Their model links price elasticies, risk functions and attributable fractions to 47 diseases and works through the consequences in terms of alcohol consumption, costs and QALYs. The work showed that a 40p minimum price would be expected to produce a 2.6% reduction in mean consumption, reduce deaths by 1180 per annum and generate 8,200 QALYs per annum (after 10 years, when full effect is reached). A 50p minimum price would more than double all of these effects.
