Regulating the drugs industry transparently.

; the preferred remedies are public education about safe drinking, improved policing, better treatment for alcohol problems, and self regulation by the alcohol industry—the policies which evidence suggests are the least likely to reduce problem drinking. The UK government has foregone the use of the most effective policy to reduce hazardous drinking: using taxation to increase the price of the beverages containing the highest concentrations of alcohol. 5 It justifies this decision by saying that increased price has not been shown definitely to reduce harm due to alcohol , 1 an assertion at odds with the views of the world's leading researchers on alcohol. 5 8 The government has also rejected any policies that would reduce the availability of alcohol. Instead, it embraces the paradoxical idea that allowing drinking for up to 24 hours a day for seven days a week will reduce binge drinking and public disorder. It believes that, somehow, longer trading hours will help to create a continental drinking culture in Britain. This proposal has caused understandable consternation among British judges, police, the Royal College of Physicians, medical researchers, and alcohol experts. 8–10 Experience in Australia suggests that even a government bent on deregulation could do better. 7 Over the past two decades Australia has expanded alcohol availability, liberalised trading hours, and not increased overall taxation on alcohol. In 1980-2000 in the United Kingdom per capita alcohol consumption increased by 31%, but in Australia it fell by 24%—as did many of the indicators of alcohol related harm that increased so steeply in the United Kingdom. 7 Australia has imposed lower taxes on low alcohol (less than 3.8%) beer than full strength beer. Also, all states defined drink driving as driving with a blood alcohol concentration over 0.05% (rather than 0.08% as in the United Kingdom). Drink driving laws have also been enforced vigorously by well publicised, large scale random breath testing in the largest states. The immediate and sustained reduction in deaths and serious injuries from road crashes that followed the introduction of random breath testing in the largest Australian state ensured strong public support for continuing the policy. 11 Low alcohol beer now accounts for 40% of all beer consumed in Australia. 7 The UK government could avoid the worsening epidemic of public drunkenness by not increasing alcohol availability, by lowering taxes on beverages with lower alcohol concentrations, and by reducing the limit for blood alcohol …