Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 23, 2026
The Motivation for Alcohol Reward: Predictors of Progressive-Ratio Intravenous Alcohol Self-Administration in Humans
Published on: April 28, 2022
Potential benefits of minimum unit pricing for alcohol versus a ban on below cost selling in England 2014: modelling
Alan Brennan1, Yang Meng2, John Holmes2
1School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4DA, UK a.brennan@sheffield.ac.uk.
Objective:
To evaluate the potential impact of two alcohol control policies under consideration in England: banning below cost selling of alcohol and minimum unit pricing.
Design:
Modelling study using the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model version 2.5.
Setting:
England 2014-15.
Population:
Adults and young people aged 16 or more, including subgroups of moderate, hazardous, and harmful drinkers.
Interventions:
Policy to ban below cost selling, which means that the selling price to consumers could not be lower than tax payable on the product, compared with policies of minimum unit pricing at £0.40 (€0.57; $0.75), 45 p, and 50 p per unit (7.9 g/10 mL) of pure alcohol.
Main Outcome Measures:
Changes in mean consumption in terms of units of alcohol, drinkers' expenditure, and reductions in deaths, illnesses, admissions to hospital, and quality adjusted life years.
Results:
The proportion of the market affected is a key driver of impact, with just 0.7% of all units estimated to be sold below the duty plus value added tax threshold implied by a ban on below cost selling, compared with 23.2% of units for a 45 p minimum unit price. Below cost selling is estimated to reduce harmful drinkers' mean annual consumption by just 0.08%, around 3 units per year, compared with 3.7% or 137 units per year for a 45 p minimum unit price (an approximately 45 times greater effect). The ban on below cost selling has a small effect on population health-saving an estimated 14 deaths and 500 admissions to hospital per annum. In contrast, a 45 p minimum unit price is estimated to save 624 deaths and 23,700 hospital admissions. Most of the harm reductions (for example, 89% of estimated deaths saved per annum) are estimated to occur in the 5.3% of people who are harmful drinkers.
Conclusions:
The ban on below cost selling, implemented in the England in May 2014, is estimated to have small effects on consumption and health harm. The previously announced policy of a minimum unit price, if set at expected levels between 40 p and 50 p per unit, is estimated to have an approximately 40-50 times greater effect.
More Related Videos
07:31Murine Drinking Models in the Development of Pharmacotherapies for Alcoholism: Drinking in the Dark and Two-bottle Choice
Published on: January 7, 2019
08:45Modeling Alcohol Consumption in Rodents Using Two-Bottle Choice Home Cage Drinking and Microstructural Analysis
Published on: November 8, 2024
Related Concept Videos
02:31Protection of Alcohols
Protection
It defines a protecting group as the masking agent to make the more reactive species inert to a given set of conditions. This concept is depicted via the illustration of liquid flow through different outlets in an assembly of pipes. The analogy helps to understand the role...
01:25Microbes in Beverage Production
01:09UV–Vis Spectroscopy: Beer–Lambert Law
02:23Alcohols from Carbonyl Compounds: Reduction
Catalytic hydrogenation is similar to the reduction of an alkene or alkyne by adding H2 across the pi bond in the presence of transition metal catalysts like Raney Ni, Pd–C, Pt, or Ru. Aldehydes and ketones can be reduced by this method, often under mild to moderate heat...
03:12Freezing Point Depression and Boiling Point Elevation
The boiling point of a liquid is the temperature at which its vapor pressure is equal to ambient atmospheric pressure. Since the vapor pressure of a solution is lowered due to the presence of nonvolatile solutes, it stands to reason that the solution’s boiling point will subsequently be increased. Vapor pressure increases with temperature, and so a solution will require a higher temperature than will pure solvent to achieve any given vapor pressure, including one...
02:32Physical Properties of Alcohols and Phenols
Alcohols possess a higher boiling point than aliphatic hydrocarbons of...