The Effect of Introducing a Minimum Price on the Distribution of Alcohol Purchase: A Counterfactual Analysis

Sharma, Anurag; Étilé, Fabrice; Sinha, Kompal

doi:10.1002/hec.3388

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…The Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model is one such model and has been applied in England, 25–29 47 Scotland 45 51 and Canada 48 and provides very strong support for the specificity criterion. Further support is provided by other different modelling studies in the UK 49 50 and Australia 30 31 and a (non-randomised) trial in the USA. 41 Thus, support for the specificity criteria is very strong.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 92%

Evidence for the effectiveness of minimum pricing of alcohol: a systematic review and assessment using the Bradford Hill criteria for causality

2017

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ObjectivesTo assess the evidence for price-based alcohol policy interventions to determine whether minimum unit pricing (MUP) is likely to be effective.DesignSystematic review and assessment of studies according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, against the Bradford Hill criteria for causality. Three electronic databases were searched from inception to February 2017. Additional articles were found through hand searching and grey literature searches.Criteria for selecting studiesWe included any study design that reported on the effect of price-based interventions on alcohol consumption or alcohol-related morbidity, mortality and wider harms. Studies reporting on the effects of taxation or affordability and studies that only investigated price elasticity of demand were beyond the scope of this review. Studies with any conflict of interest were excluded. All studies were appraised for methodological quality.ResultsOf 517 studies assessed, 33 studies were included: 26 peer-reviewed research studies and seven from the grey literature. All nine of the Bradford Hill criteria were met, although different types of study satisfied different criteria. For example, modelling studies complied with the consistency and specificity criteria, time series analyses demonstrated the temporality and experiment criteria, and the analogy criterion was fulfilled by comparing the findings with the wider literature on taxation and affordability.ConclusionsOverall, the Bradford Hill criteria for causality were satisfied. There was very little evidence that minimum alcohol prices are not associated with consumption or subsequent harms. However the overall quality of the evidence was variable, a large proportion of the evidence base has been produced by a small number of research teams, and the quantitative uncertainty in many estimates or forecasts is often poorly communicated outside the academic literature. Nonetheless, price-based alcohol policy interventions such as MUP are likely to reduce alcohol consumption, alcohol-related morbidity and mortality.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 92%

Evidence for the effectiveness of minimum pricing of alcohol: a systematic review and assessment using the Bradford Hill criteria for causality

2017

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“…Countries that currently use minimum unit pricing include Canada, Moldova, Russia, Scotland, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and some US states (IAS 2019). MUP has been proposed as a way to target the population of heavy drinkers without penalizing light or moderate drinkers (Holmes et al 2014;Sharma et al 2016;Calcott 2019).…”

Section: Minimum Price Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They find that moderate drinkers are barely affected regardless of income, while the heavy drinkers are most responsive to the minimum price adjustment, and the effects here are largest for the lowest-income drinkers. Sharma et al (2016) focus on Australia. Their simulation study evaluates the difference in the observed and counterfactual distributions of purchases based on whether or not a $2 MUP on alcohol is imposed.…”

Section: Minimum Price Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light, Moderate, and Heavy Drinking

Markowitz¹,

Ding²

2020

Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

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Most countries around the world regulate alcohol in some form or another. Taxation is a popular form of regulation, but governments use many different approaches including prohibiting sales to minors, minimum purchase prices, and restrictions on days and hours of sales. Knowing how these policies affect the demand for alcohol is necessary for setting optimal policies. A common feature of most of the existing studies on alcohol policies is that they evaluate the effectiveness of the policy at the mean level of consumption. However, setting alcohol taxes or other regulations based on mean consumption may not produce desirable results given that low levels of consumption have different health and consumer utility considerations than higher levels. The purpose of this chapter is to review

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“…First, the outlined hypothesis is longitudinal in nature and, hence, requires a longitudinal study to test it. Second, evidence regarding heavy drinkers' responsiveness to tax and price changes is inconclusive (Aepli, 2014;Byrnes, Shakeshaft, Petrie, & Doran, 2016;Elder et al, 2010;Sharma, Etile, & Sinha, 2016;Xuan, Chaloupka, et al, 2015). In addition, the differential impact of policy and availability changes, as a function of baseline drinking, is not well studied beyond price and tax studies.…”

Section: Relationships Tapered Offmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light and heavy drinking in jurisdictions with different alcohol policy environments

Foster

Gmel

Mohler‐Kuo

2019

International Journal of Drug Policy

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BACKGROUND A basic, yet untested tenet underlying alcohol control policies is that they should affect both light and heavy drinking, thereby shifting the entire population in a favourable direction. The aim of this study was to test this assumption in young Swiss men. METHODS Cross-sectional self-reported data-from 5755 young Swiss men participating in the Cohort Study on Substance Use Risk Factors (C-SURF), a large cohort study on young men living within 21 jurisdictions across Switzerland-were analysed via nested logistic regression. With this approach, a set of increasingly-heavy drinking patterns was broken down into a set of nested regression models, each one estimating the probability of heavier drinking, conditional on the lighter drinking pattern. Drinking patterns relating to heavy episodic drinking (HED), heavy volume drinking (HVD) on weekends, and workweek drinking, as well as alcohol use disorder (AUD) were examined. The explanatory variable was a previously-used alcohol policy environment index (APEI) reflecting the number of alcohol control policies implemented in each jurisdiction. Conventional and multilevel logistic regression models were tested, adjusted for age, education, linguistic region, urban/rural status, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, sensation seeking, antisocial personality disorder, and unobserved heterogeneity between jurisdictions. RESULTS For HED, weekend HVD, and AUD, negative relationships with the APEI were found, such that with a higher APEI the probability of lighter drinking patterns was increased while the probability of heavier patterns was reduced, including a reduced probability of the heaviest patterns. These relationships were non-linear, however, and tapered off towards the heavy end of the drinking spectrum. No relationship was identified between the APEI and workweek drinking patterns. CONCLUSION Among young Swiss men, stricter alcohol policy environments were associated with a global shift towards lighter drinking, consistent with the basic tenet behind the universal prevention approach.

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The Effect of Introducing a Minimum Price on the Distribution of Alcohol Purchase: A Counterfactual Analysis

Cited by 17 publications

References 30 publications

Evidence for the effectiveness of minimum pricing of alcohol: a systematic review and assessment using the Bradford Hill criteria for causality

Evidence for the effectiveness of minimum pricing of alcohol: a systematic review and assessment using the Bradford Hill criteria for causality

Light, Moderate, and Heavy Drinking

Light and heavy drinking in jurisdictions with different alcohol policy environments

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