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Reposted by Colin Angus

Institute of Alcohol Studies @ias.org.uk · 20h

Clinicians: Should patients at high risk of alcohol harm use no and low-alcohol drinks?

New research highlights the need for nuanced guidance beyond zero-tolerance, considering non-abstinence goals and harm reduction:

Zero tolerance for 0%? How should clinicians and other practitioners respond to the use of alcohol‐free and low‐alcohol products in higher risk groups

Alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks (no/lo drinks) are now widely available and popular with consumers in high-income countries; however, it is unclear whether clinicians and others working to…

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Colin Angus

SARG - SCHARR @sarg-scharr.bsky.social · 22h

The latest publication from our evaluation of the QUIT hospital-based tobacco dependence treatment service is now available. It investigates patient flows from hospital to community stop smoking services and subsequent quitting outcomes. Find out more about this work at quit.sites.sheffield.ac.uk

Smoking cessation after referral from hospital to community stop smoking services: an observational study

Introduction In England, acute National Health Service (NHS) hospitals routinely ask patients about smoking status on admission, offering in-hospital treatment for tobacco dependence and support for q...

bmjpublichealth.bmj.com

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 5d

A nice primer here (ft. @sarg-scharr.bsky.social research) on no/lo alcohol prices and whether they really are more expensive than their alcoholic equivalents.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Why are alcohol-free drinks so expensive? Some fake spirits cost over £25 a bottle!

In this new series, our money and consumer editor considers the often perplexing reasons items cost what they do. As a new report suggests booze-free booze can cost 25% more than the alcoholic equival...

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Colin Angus

Institute of Alcohol Studies @ias.org.uk · 15d

A new @addictionjournal.bsky.social commentary warns of regulatory capture in UK alcohol licensing

The ‘Licensing Taskforce’ - led by industry figures - could weaken democratic accountability & redefine licensing as business promotion, not public protection

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Regulatory capture in UK alcohol licensing policy: The 2025 ‘licensing taskforce’ report

Click on the article title to read more.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 18d

R code for this plot is here:
github.com/VictimOfMath...

Routine-Data/FoodAndDrinkInflation.R at master · VictimOfMaths/Routine-Data

Plots and analysis of routinely published data. Contribute to VictimOfMaths/Routine-Data development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 18d

Alcoholic drinks, along with fruit and fish, are the only food and drink category to have got cheaper, in real terms, since the start of the cost-of-living crisis.

Beer has got slightly more expensive in real terms since the end of 2022, but wine and spirits remain at late 2022 prices.

A line chart showing the changes in real-terms prices (i.e. after adjusting for overall inflation) in the 13 separate food and drink categories that ONS reports between January 2021 and September 2025.

Oils and fats have seen the biggest increases, by far, of almost 40%, while most other food and drink groups have increased by 5-15%. Only beer, fruit, spirits, fish and wine have seen a real-terms fall in prices over this period.

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Reposted by Colin Angus

Nic Taylor @nic-alcohol.bsky.social · 21d

Happy to see this commentary come out - some thoughts on the limited implementation of the alcohol floor price in the Northern Territory, and the impact of inflation on the $1.30 price point with no indexation.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The Cost of Poor Policy Implementation and Maintenance: The Northern Territory's Alcohol Floor Price

Click on the article title to read more.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Colin Angus

Faculty of Public Health @fphuk.bsky.social · 22d

Join the Faculty’s Alcohol SIG for an online webinar: Alcohol Licensing Under Threat.

Dr. James Nicholls & Prof. Niamh Fitzgerald will discuss proposed changes to alcohol licensing, including a new ‘economic growth’ objective.

The event is open for FPH members www.fph.org.uk/events-cours...

Alcohol Licensing Under Threat

Alcohol licensing under threat: the urgent need for public health responses to the UK Government's fast-track licensing consultation

www.fph.org.uk

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23d

You can access the data itself here:
www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/constr...

My R code to extract alcohol-specific deaths using the {NomisR} package and draw the graphs from this thread is here:
github.com/VictimOfMath...

Routine-Data/NOMISASD.R at master · VictimOfMaths/Routine-Data

Plots and analysis of routinely published data. Contribute to VictimOfMaths/Routine-Data development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23d

This data comes from NOMIS - ONS's portal where access census and labour market data.

2024 mortality data was quietly added to this recently, from which you can derive these figures, even though the official alcohol-specific deaths release probably won't be published for several months.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23d

Alcohol-specific deaths have falling in almost all age groups, with the biggest falls in the age groups with the highest rates and that had seen the biggest increases during the pandemic.

Although, maybe there's a slight concern about the oldest (75+) age groups where the trends look less positive.

A line chart with a separate small line panel for each 5-year age group from 20-24 until 90+. This highlights that the highest rates of alcohol-specific deaths are in 50-69 year olds. Ages 50-79 have seen much more dramatic increases in deaths during the pandemic. Ages 50-69 saw the sharpest reductions in 2024, but 75-84 year olds saw no reduction and 85+ year-olds saw a continued increase in 2024, albeit from a much lower level than younger groups.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23d

Alcohol-specific deaths fell in both men and women, but the fall was slightly larger in both absolute and relative terms for men (-8.7% vs. -6.2%), but around twice as many men as women die from these causes each year.

Another, similar, chart, this time showing the trends in alcohol-specific deaths in England & Wales by sex. Both sexes follow almost exactly the same pattern - stability until 2019, then a sharp rise until 2023 and a fall in 2024 - but with male rates roughly double female rates.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23d

The fall in 2024 was slightly larger in England than in Wales, although this should be considered in the context of Wales' much smaller population making Welsh figures considerably noisier than the English ones.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23d

New data shows that the rate of alcohol-specific deaths in England & Wales *fell* in 2024 by 7.8%, but remain well above pre-pandemic levels.

This is the first fall since 2018, and is certainly good news, but the no. of people who sadly died from these causes in 2024 is still 1/3 higher than 2019

A line chart showing the trends in alcohol-specific deaths in England and Wales (separately) between 2013 and 2024. Both lines show a similar pattern, although Wales' figures are consistently slightly higher. The trend was fairly stable until 2019, then increased sharply during the pandemic, but has fallen back slightly in 2024 from the 2023 peak.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 26d

Interesting thoughts here on recent trends in young adult mortality in the US and Germany. The rise in alcohol deaths in both countries is something we've also seen across the UK.

Just how long they might persist is a really important question for public health policy at the moment.

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 26d

I wrote a commentary on a new study comparing US and German mortality trends among “early adults” (age 25-44).

The pre-pandemic trends were wildly different (US far worse), but there’s some sign of increased alcohol deaths persisting since the pandemic in both countries. Concerning stuff.

Early Adult Mortality in a Cross-National Context

US mortality has long been considered exceptional. Since the mid-1980s, mortality in the US has been higher than in other wealthy nations, and over the last 15 years, that disadvantage has grown.1,2 M...

jamanetwork.com

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 26d

This is super interesting, thanks for sharing. We're working at the moment on a wider comparative study across many countries of the pandemic-related increase in alcohol deaths and how it has persisted (or not). The US and Germany are far from unique, sadly.

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Reposted by Colin Angus

Andrew Bell @andrewjdbell.bsky.social · 27d

Want to know how to use MAIHDA to examine heterogeniety in policy outcomes? Here's a nice worked-through example!

How does intersectional identity impact preference for in-person vs online GP appoinments?

Has been great working with @healthfoundation.bsky.social colleagues on this :)

A caterpillar plot of slope variability in the effect of appointment type. Statistically significant differentials are coloured in blue, of which there are 4 positive and 8 negative. The figure is taken from the linked blog figure 5

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 27d

This is entirely possible, the data exists (although England still haven't published the 2023 data while Scotland are on 2024 already), but it's a huge faff to tidy up. I have done some of it before, but you know how they like to move the data around and randomly reformat it to keep us on our toes.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 27d

That, plus safer cars, lower alcohol consumption in young adults, probably some other things I haven't thought of (maybe more socialising online means less reason to travel?).

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 27d

I doubt it's a big part of the story - the timing isn't quite right and also most of the evaluations in the change in the drink drive level find very little impact, probably because enforcement is so low that nobody thinks they'll actually get caught.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 27d

I think a combination of pubs closing and a fall in young people's drinking (which are obviously not unrelated, although hard to say which caused which) is very plausibly a contributing factor.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 27d

It's not impossible, but I'd be surprised if it was artefactual. I'm using a broad definition (anything with an ICD-10 code starting in V) and the GB road traffic deaths data shows a similar pattern, with a sharp drop around 2010: www.gov.uk/government/s...

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 27d

R code for this plot (and plenty of others) here: github.com/VictimOfMath...

Experiments/ScotlandAPCCurvature2024.R at master · VictimOfMaths/Experiments

Somewhere to put strange ideas and works in progress - VictimOfMaths/Experiments

github.com

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 27d

I was looking at some Scottish cause of death data yesterday and the extent to which transport accident deaths in young men have all but disappeared is pretty remarkable.

Nice to find a good news story in this data for a change.

A lexis diagram - essentially a heatmap showing rates of death from transport accidents by age and over time from 2001-2024 in Scotland. For men in the 2000s there was a clear peak in deaths at ages 15-35 (plus a smaller one in the oldest age groups). But around 2010 this basically disappeared, and now all age groups have similarly, much lower, rates of transport accident deaths. For women the pattern is similar, albeit at a much lower level, except that in the early 2000s there were more deaths in older, rather than younger adults.

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Reposted by Colin Angus

John Holmes @jholmessheff.bsky.social · 28d

I spoke to @samuelacuff.bsky.social and @noahemery.bsky.social on their Addiction Psychologist podcast about the evidence on minimum unit pricing for alcohol. You can listen below: creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

The Addiction Psychologist • A podcast on Spotify for Creators

Drs. Noah Emery and Samuel Acuff interview researchers, clinicians, and policymakers in the field of addiction psychology with the hopes of enhancing recovery. Official podcast of the Society for Addi...

creators.spotify.com

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