The Cost of Alcohol

The UK earns over £12 billion from alcohol taxes each year.

The societal cost of alcohol harm is more than £27 billion.

Only £200 million is invested in specific alcohol treatment budgets.

The consequences of alcohol include individual health, pressure on families, emergency services, healthcare & local communities.

Any alcohol strategy that aims to be effective long term must prioritise prevention.

Unlike any other drug, alcohol has a unique challenge in that it doesn’t just carry a use problem, it carries a non-use problem.

Alcohol is addictive, our culture glamorises, normalises and encourages drinking to excess.

But if we don’t drink, we’re assumed to have a “problem.” We face stigma, are labelled as boring or seen as being on some kind of moral high ground.

This dynamic should make alcohol different from other drugs when designing public health strategies.

If our national alcohol strategy remains reactive, we will only ever be chasing treatment needs.

And while treatment should be prioritised and properly funded, treatment alone will never change the trajectory of alcohol harms.

A meaningful strategy should make an alcohol-free lifestyle visible & attractive, invest in early intervention, support public education, and empower communities to make healthier choices.

Most importantly ~ it needs to be okay not to drink.

Without prevention at its core, we will continue to count the costs in lives and pounds.

Figures sourced from HMRC (2023), Public Health England (2016), and Alcohol Change UK (2023).