Raise tax on alcohol and junk food to cut deaths from liver disease, experts say | Health

European governments should impose much higher taxes on alcohol and unhealthy foods to combat the continent’s 284,000 annual deaths from liver disease, experts say.

Taxes on these products should increase sharply enough that the money raised can cover the enormous costs they impose on health care, the criminal justice system, and social services.

The call for strong action against common causes of serious liver disease comes from an expert commission from the European Association for the Study of the Liver and the medical journal Lancet.

They are urging European governments to ensure all alcohol products carry health warnings and to prevent under-18s from being targeted with online adverts for alcoholic drinks and junk food.

Bold measures are needed to combat “the growing and unsustainable burden of liver disease,” the commission says in a report published Wednesday in the Lancet.

Experts are calling on the EU and the World Health Organization to encourage European national governments to implement their recommendations. They say governments should learn from the successful fight against tobacco in recent decades and urgently tackle what the WHO calls the “commercial determinants of health” – producers of tobacco, alcohol, ultra-processed foods and fossil fuels promoting products that the UN health arm says kill 2.7 million people a year in Europe.

Governments should “align the taxation of alcohol and unhealthy foods with the economic burden they impose, including the costs borne by health systems, law enforcement, the justice system and social services,” the commission says.

Urgent action on the common causes of liver disease is long overdue, its members say, given that 215,000 people die each year in Europe from liver cirrhosis – which is closely linked to alcohol – and another 69,400 from liver cancer. Together, these two conditions cause 780 deaths per day, or about 3% of all deaths in Europe, they calculate.

Experts identify four main causes of liver-related deaths: alcohol, poor diet, obesity and viral hepatitis. Eliminating “behavioral risk factors”, such as excessive alcohol consumption and poor diet, could halve the prevalence of liver disease and would also reduce the number of people developing heart disease, diabetes and cancer, they add.

If implemented, the commission’s call for a drastic increase in alcohol taxes to reduce consumption would see the price of beer, wine and spirits rise much higher.

In recent years, the Institute of Alcohol Studies think tank has urged the Chancellor of the Exchequer to use his budget to impose much higher taxes on alcohol products and ensure that “alcohol duty rates are based on the economic cost of alcohol’s harm to society”.

Jem Roberts, the institute’s head of external affairs, argued after Rachel Reeves’ last budget in December that beer duty would need to rise by 68%, cider duty by 227%, spirits duty by 68% and wine duty by 34% to meet this target – increases he conceded “may seem ridiculously high”.

It calculated that if the impact of these increases were fully passed on to the retail cost, the price of a 15-can pack of 4.6% ABV beer would rise from £14.59 to £19.51, the cost of an 18-can pack of 4.5% ABV cider would rise from £13.99 to £22.54 and a bottle of wine would rise from £13.99 to £22.54. 12.5% ABV would increase from £8.75 to £22.54. £9.82. Roberts said the new prices would allow England to match prices in Scotland, which introduced a minimum unit price for alcohol in 2018.

Pamela Healy, chief executive of the British Liver Trust, backed experts’ plea for higher taxation. “We urgently need policies that reflect the true harm caused by our unhealthy eating and drinking environment,” she said. “It’s not about creating a nanny state; it’s about creating a level playing field. »

Matt Lambert, chief executive of alcohol industry body Portman Group, said the best way to tackle alcohol-related harm was to promote moderate, responsible drinking and targeted interventions for those who drink too much, “rather than penalizing the moderate majority while doing little to help those who drink the most”.

He added: “We are warning against a knee-jerk demonization of an entire industry, which is working with us to ensure alcohol marketing is responsible and promoting labeling that features the NHS low-risk drinking guidelines, which have been voluntarily adopted by a large majority of the industry.