Health experts want new anti-booze strategy
Health campaigners in the North East are calling for a new strategy to tackle the harm caused by drinking too much alcohol.
Balance, the North East Alcohol Programme, says it has now been ten years since any national Alcohol Strategy was launched.
It says people in the North East have been failed by promises for measures to tackle binge drinking, cut alcohol fuelled violence and reduce the number of people drinking at harmful levels.
It estimates around 855,000 adults in the region – and 60% of male drinkers – were drinking above low risk limits during 2020.
Balance says that in the last decade, successive governments have failed to implement an alcohol strategy and a new plan to tackle alcoholharmisurgentlyrequired, especially with the impact of the pandemic:
Sue Taylor, head of alcohol policy at Balance, said: “We are running out of time. Ten years is too long to wait for a new strategy to tackle alcohol harm.
"The UK was already at crisis point with alcohol long before Covid, but the pandemic saw a tipping point, especially in regions like the North East where we suffer the worst harms.
“Cheap alcohol together with the terrible anxieties of Covid created a ‘perfect storm’ which resulted in millions more drinking at risky levels.
"For ten years, we have seen a complete absence of leadership from the Government, and this has contributed to unprecedented alcohol harms – the time is ripe for an evidence-based, comprehensive, national alcohol strategy, which tackles the affordability, availability and promotion of alcohol.”