Ok, this is pretty awesome

🧵A long thread on last week's report on adolescent drinking from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. I have many questions...🧵

TLDR: There's a good chance the trends are spurious and we should be cautious about claims English children are drinking more

On the topic of alcohol uptake during the pandemic in England

The dataset of death occurrence by week and ICD10 code allows to capture 95% of the alcohol-specific deaths per ONS definition

Pre-pandemic, there was already an upward trend

But things really took off as of May '20

Some nice coverage of no/lo drinks and why they aren't always cheaper than their alcoholic counterparts on BBC Morning Live today from 43 minutes in.

(Trigger warning: this does feature a small amount of my face)

bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod…

Some analysis in The Times here comparing alcohol-specific death rates in Local Authorities across the UK, ft. some thoughts from Peter Rice and I.

thetimes.co.uk/article/inverc…

This is both interesting and pretty evocative of some of my youth.

(Warning, does feature a small contribution from me)

theguardian.com/society/2024/a…

On balance, the evidence actually suggests MUP did impact the heaviest drinkers in Scotland. Different studies found different results, but overall an impact on heavy drinking is more consistent with the results of the highest quality studies.

🚨 NEW JOB POSTING 📢

We are looking to recruit a new Hastings Fellow to join Institute for Social Marketing and Health - UoS at University of Stirling to work on alcohol, vaping, and other commercial determinants of health.

🌐 Advert: stir.ac.uk/9vs

📅 Deadline: 3rd June 2024.

👇 Key details

RTs appreciated!

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