Alcohol deaths in the UK at all-time high, as charity urges new approach

Alcohol-specific deaths in the UK have reached an all-time high, official figures have shown, with a charity calling for a new approach to prevention and harm as a result.

The data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which follows a half a decade of year-on-year rises, has prompted the charity Alcohol Change UK to call for the government to take action.

In 2023, 10,473 people in the UK died as a direct result of alcohol, the ONS said. This is a 4% increase on the 10,048 lives lost in 2022, and a 38% increase compared to 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, when 7,565 people lost their lives.

The rise in deaths from 2022 to 2023 was mostly because of increases in England and Wales, which saw increases of 4.6% and 15.6%, respectively. There was no increase in deaths in Scotland over this period and a slight decrease in Northern Ireland.

Ash Singleton, director of research and public affairs at Alcohol Change UK, said: “The tragically high number of alcohol-specific deaths, and the thousands more not reflected in this data where alcohol is a contributing factor, are not a coincidence, but a direct result of years of government inaction to tackle this harm to save and improve lives.”

The charity is urging the government to introduce minimum unit pricing in England to help curb problem drinking.

It has also called for a new alcohol strategy for England, focusing on population-level approaches, including restrictions on alcohol marketing, and mandatory alcohol labelling, among a range of other measures.

It has also pointed out the figures cover alcohol-specific deaths only; those caused by diseases known to be a direct consequence of alcohol, such as alcohol-related liver disease which made up 75.6% of alcohol-specific deaths in the UK in 2023.#

“They do not include alcohol-related deaths from conditions including cardiovascular disease, mental ill-health and cancer, the three ‘biggest killers’ that the government wants to halve,” said Singleton.

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