QAAD

QAAD supports the recommendation of the Chief Medical Officer, Alcohol Concern and the Royal College of Physicians that there should be a minimum price per unit of alcohol. Click here to read QAAD’s briefing paper on Minimum Pricing and here to link to the Methodist paper summarising action that can be taken now.

What is our perspective as Quakers?

It is sometimes argued that general measures such as pricing ‘penalise’ the many for the excesses of the few.  However, 9 million adults in Britain now drink over recommended guidelines, and studies indicate that price is a key influence on heavier drinkers and on younger drinkers (including those who are too young to buy alcohol). The affordability of alcohol has dropped significantly relative to income in the last thirty years, whilst health harms have risen. We accept the large body of evidence and independent expert opinion that minimum alcohol pricing is the most effective way to reduce health and social harms.
To consider alcohol problems purely in terms of individual pathology and personal vulnerability disregards study evidence that affordability, availability and culture all affect the numbers of people who develop problems. For QAAD this evidence links with our Quaker witness of responding to ‘that of God in everyone’ and working as a community in practical and spiritual connectedness.  Proper treatment support – including residential services – for those with alcohol problems is a part of this concern.  Alcohol has been poorly resourced in comparison with other drugs and we believe this balance should be corrected, including through the provision of support for close others and children.

Alcohol has been poorly resourced in comparison with other drugs and we believe this balance should be corrected, including through the provision of support for close others and children.  We have also suggested that the spiritual dimension of dependency treatment is more widely addressed.

We welcome the fact that the Coalition government is exploring ways of allowing Local Authorities and residents to influence licensing policy more fully, and particularly that local levels of health problems may be included.

We are pressing for:

• The inclusion of public health an objective of the Alcohol Licensing Act of 2003, so that the health problems caused by alcohol misuse are more fully integrated into national policy.
• Minimum pricing per unit of alcohol, and a gradation of tax according to strength of wines, beers and ciders, to encourage the production of lower strength drinks.
• Mandatory labelling rather than the current voluntary arrangements, in order to ensure that clear information on the units contained in all forms of alcohol is available, wherever it is sold.