Professor Theresa Marteau, Behaviour and Health Research Unit, University of Cambridge, alongside collaborator and lead author Ryota Nakamura (UEA) have discovered that the Scottish Alcohol Act, 2010 which led to a Scotland-wide ban on multi-buy drinks promotions in 2011, failed to reduce the amount of alcohol purchased.

The research, conducted by the Behaviour and Health Research Unit¹, and published in the journal  Addiction, evaluated the policy’s impact. The study found no evidence to suggest a reduction in the volume of alcohol purchased, either for the Scottish population as a whole, or for individual socio-economic groups. The study reports that although Scottish consumers were buying fewer alcoholic products per shopping trip than they would have without the ban the frequency of shopping trips involving beer and cider purchases actually increased (by 9.2 %)  which left the total quantities of alcohol purchased  unchanged.

Professor Marteau said, “This study provides timely evidence on the seeming ineffectiveness of an intervention designed to reduce alcohol consumption.”

¹The Behaviour and Health Research Unit is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, RAND and the University of East Anglia

To read the paper in Addiction please click here