CRACKING down on cheap alcohol sales will start saving lives in Scotland within a year, the nation's most senior doctor predicted last night.
Chief Medical Officer Harry Burns revealed he had overcome his own scepticism about the SNP's drink plans and now believed the evidence for imposing minimum pricing on alcohol was "overwhelming".
He said he was convinced deaths from liver diseas
e would fall within 12 months of the new strategy being put in place.
And he said deaths from other alcohol-related illnesses, including cancer, would start to tumble within five years.
Burns's fulsome backing for minimum pricing, given in an exclusive interview with Scotland on Sunday, comes as a huge boost for SNP ministers as they host a summit on alcohol tomorrow in Edinburgh. The Scottish Government finds itself lined up with doctors against ferocious resistance from the alcohol industry.
Burns said the time had come for Scotland to take a stand against alcohol problems believed to cause more than £2.25 billion worth of damage to the economy every year.
He said: "Prices for alcohol have fallen dramatically over the last few decades and government hasn't done anything to stop it. The evidence is overwhelming that when prices tack down, deaths tack up.
"There are lots of things we need to do. But a good place to start is minimum pricing. I am convinced we will see an impact within the first year. There would be people alive at the end of it who would have been dead without the policy. I am convinced the problem is serious enough that we should do it."
Burns said thousands of Scots were currently sitting with "fatty" livers "teetering on the edge of failure". The organs, however, could recover if they were given more breaks from drink. Pushing up prices for the cheapest alcohol would force some problem drinkers to cut back. "What we are talking about here is pulling people back from the brink," Burns said. But he said there would be other quick health benefits too, including a quick reduction in emergency admissions.
The Scottish Government is expected to introduce legislation next year to set a minimum price for a unit of alcohol, driving up the price of cheap beers, ciders, wines and supermarket own-brand spirits. A much-mooted 40p would put the cost of the cheapest bottle of whisky up to at least £11.20.
The government also plans to ban off-sales promotions and give local licensing boards the power to raise the minimum age for buying alcohol in an off-licence to 21. It is far from certain, however, to get the measures through parliament.
Scotland would be the first country to impose minimum pricing. But Burns is still confident of the evidence of its success. He points to Finland. The Nordic nation, where alcohol was traditionally very expensive, felt forced to slash tax on drink in the 1990s when thousands of citizens started making cut-price "booze cruises" to neighbouring Estonia.
Burns said: "They got significant health problems very quickly. Then they increased their taxation level again and my understanding is health problems are diminishing." Burns believes minimum pricing would be even more effective at raising prices than tax hikes, which supermarkets would be free to absorb if they wished. Researchers in England recently concluded that a minimum price of 50p could prevent nearly 100,000 hospital admissions a year there.
Burns, whose favourite tipple is alcohol-free Beck's lager, wants to go further, slashing the drink-drive limit and looking at ways of making low and non-alcoholic drinks cheaper. He has previously called for curbs on alcohol advertising and sponsorship.
But industry leaders argue that minimum pricing could provoke some countries to raise import barriers to whisky and have suggested it would fall foul of European Union rules. They have also cast doubt on its ability to improve our health.
David Williamson of the Scotch Whisky Association said: "We have seen nothing to suggest minimum pricing will have any impact on alcohol-related harm. The industry supports the vast majority of the Scottish Government's strategy on alcohol but not minimum pricing, which we believe would be illegal and likely to be ineffective."
Jeremy Beadles, chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, said: "A national minimum pricing scheme has never before been introduced to tackle alcohol misuse anywhere in the world, so there is no real way of knowing what the impact would be. But what we do know is that countries with the highest prices, such as Sweden, Denmark and Ireland, also have some of the highest levels of alcohol misuse.
"It is unlikely a drinking culture that stretches back thousands of years can be changed in a year by putting prices up."
