Booze pricing backing

Group’s support

An alcohol support service has backed the Scottish Government’s new minimum unit pricing measure to tackle the nation’s booze problem.

South Lanarkshire Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) say the move – 50p minimum per unit of alcohol – could mark a turning point in the region’s unhealthy relationship with the bottle.

Chair Liam Purdie said: “Tackling alcohol and drug misuse is an absolute priority of the South Lanarkshire ADP. To do this we need to work collectively towards reducing and preventing harm.

“We believe minimum unit pricing (MUP) is a positive development to reduce alcohol related harm as all the available evidence points to MUP delivering significant health and social benefits as it is anticipated that reduced consumption will lead to reduced alcohol-related harm.

“Alcohol misuse has a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of our population, especially those living in our most deprived communities, where the alcohol-related death rate in the most deprived 20 per cent of our population is five times that of the least deprived 20 per cent.”

The law change will help complement the work of the ADP which has a range of services providing support for those who want help, affected families and carers and children and young people affected by their own misuse or parental misuse.

Mr Purdie added: “A major focus of all this work is to promote prevention to help reduce the level of alcoholrelated harm at a community level.”