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Friday, March 8, 2013

Letter to the Editori - Msleading UK alcohol industry criticism of Canadian research on minimum pricing


We would like to respond to criticism of our research by the UK Wine and Spirit Trade Association (1), a UK alcohol industry trade magazine (2) and the Scotch Whisky Association (3). 

Our study, recently published in Addiction (4), reported a significant negative association between minimum alcohol prices and rates of wholly alcohol caused deaths. We are accused of misleading the public by reporting false estimates of the effects of minimum price changes on rates of death “hypothetically” estimated to be caused by alcohol and not “real deaths” such as those we report on our own website (5,6,7).

We are also charged with publishing results which contradict official trends in alcohol-related deaths in British Columbia, the Canadian province on which our research has focused. 

 Finally, it is claimed that minimum pricing in Canada bears no relation to what is being proposed for the United Kingdom.
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