C_17_pubblicazioni_2220_allegato

Economic impacts and prevention policies section 5
POLICIES TO TACKLE THE HARMFUL USE OF ALCOHOL
Alcohol policies have a great potential to curb alcohol-related harms, improve health, increase
productivity, reduce crime and violence, and cut government expenditure. OECD analyses
show that the largest health gains can be obtained through brief interventions in primary
care, typically targeting high-risk drinkers, and tax increases, which affect all drinkers.
Ranking in a second tier, for health impacts, are regulation and enforcement policies as well
as other health care interventions, while the evidence on school-based programmes is more
mixed. Hundreds of thousands of working-age people would be freed of alcohol-related disabilities
and would not incur injuries, with major potential gains in their productivity. Most
alcohol policies are estimated to cut health care expenditures to the extent that their implementation
costs would be more than offset. Health care interventions and enforcement of
drink-drive restrictions are more expensive policies, but they still have very favourable costeffectiveness
profiles.
• Policies to increase the prices of alcoholic drinks, regulation and enforcement policies,
education programmes and health care interventions are all effective and efficient means
to curb alcohol-related harms and improve population health.
• If offered systematically in primary care settings, brief interventions have the potential to
generate large health and life expectancy gains; a tax hike leading to an average increase
of 10% in alcohol prices would also generate very large impacts.
• Combining alcohol policies in a coherent prevention strategy would significantly increase
impacts, helping to reach a “critical mass” with greater impact on the social norms that
drive drinking behaviours.
45