Just had my first encounter with Hong Kong milk tea. Incredible stuff. I might not sleep for a week.

We've done a handy summary of all the announcements related to alcohol, tobacco and gambling in the Autumn Budget and what they all mean for public health:

New job opportunity: Come and work with some of my fabulous colleagues developing and applying new models of the links between public health and the labour market to explore the impacts of health and workplace interventions. Closing data 5th Jan: jobsite.sheffield.ac.uk/job/Research...

This is great - a clear overview of key principles in data visualisation, written in a super-accessible and interest way, with great examples throughout.

Stocking up on the finest of condiments.

Giving licensing officers enhanced powers would hollow out local democratic accountability in licensing decisions. 🎙️Listen to our podcast with Prof Niamh Fitzgerald & Dr James Nicholls🎙️ Links: www.ias.org.uk/podcast/gove...

Had a really interesting visit yesterday to The Thistle, the UK's first safe drug consumption room. Fascinating to see all the thought that's gone into its design, including extensive involvement from people with lived and living experience to make the service as accessible as possible.

📢 New on the SARG Blog! Ellen McGrane discusses an @nihr-pruaddictions.bsky.social project exploring how to integrate alcohol dependence into policy modelling. The team worked with policymakers and people with lived experience to develop a roadmap for more equitable models. #AlcoholPolicy

Has alcohol consumption in England returned to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels? A monthly population study, 2014 to 2024 buff.ly/OQC8Ii3 @melissaoldham.bsky.social @drsarahejackson.bsky.social @lionshahab.bsky.social @victimofmaths.bsky.social @jholmessheff.bsky.social @jamiebrown.bsky.social

OHID have just updated their Fingertips/Local Alcohol Profiles data with 2024 alcohol mortality figures. fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/loca... Good to see things heading in a positive direction for a change. More details in my thread from a couple of months ago: bsky.app/profile/vict...

As a current Deputy Stats & Methods Editor for Addiction, I can vouch for this being a good way of finding out what cool and interesting stuff people are up to. These are also paid positions. Also note that the call includes epidemiologists and health economists, not just statisticians.

From now on, when discussing the budget, please use “is this measure bigger than the cost to the exchequer of gen Z drinking less” as your metric for assessing whether something actually raises or costs a significant sum

Come and join our lovely team in Sheffield:

Another new @addictionjournal.bsky.social paper out today looking at trends in alcohol consumption in England and trying to answer the important question as to whether this has returned to pre-pandemic levels after rising during the first lockdown. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

We've got a new paper out in @addictionjournal.bsky.social led by @drsarahejackson.bsky.social looking at trends in cost as a motivating factor for people looking to reduce their alcohol consumption. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I had a wide-ranging chat with journalist David Hillier the other day about alcohol prices, deaths data and licensing reforms:

A few thoughts on alcohol duty ahead of the budget (and an excuse to update some old graphs). These two show the important of accounting for inflation - in cash terms alcohol duty rates are higher than ever before, but in real terms they are at historically low levels.

Does anyone know what health data they are proposing to cut here, and whether it's the underlying data, or just the reports summarising some aspects of that which are under threat? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Really interesting opinion piece in @addictionjournal.bsky.social here from some of my colleagues looking at the potential benefits and risks/challenges of no/lo alcohol products for very heavy drinkers and those in recovery: doi.org/10.1111/add....

Clinicians: Should patients at high risk of alcohol harm use no and low-alcohol drinks? New research highlights the need for nuanced guidance beyond zero-tolerance, considering non-abstinence goals and harm reduction:

The latest publication from our evaluation of the QUIT hospital-based tobacco dependence treatment service is now available. It investigates patient flows from hospital to community stop smoking services and subsequent quitting outcomes. Find out more about this work at quit.sites.sheffield.ac.uk

A nice primer here (ft. @sarg-scharr.bsky.social research) on no/lo alcohol prices and whether they really are more expensive than their alcoholic equivalents. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

A new @addictionjournal.bsky.social commentary warns of regulatory capture in UK alcohol licensing The ‘Licensing Taskforce’ - led by industry figures - could weaken democratic accountability & redefine licensing as business promotion, not public protection onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Alcoholic drinks, along with fruit and fish, are the only food and drink category to have got cheaper, in real terms, since the start of the cost-of-living crisis. Beer has got slightly more expensive in real terms since the end of 2022, but wine and spirits remain at late 2022 prices.

Happy to see this commentary come out - some thoughts on the limited implementation of the alcohol floor price in the Northern Territory, and the impact of inflation on the $1.30 price point with no indexation. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Join the Faculty’s Alcohol SIG for an online webinar: Alcohol Licensing Under Threat. Dr. James Nicholls & Prof. Niamh Fitzgerald will discuss proposed changes to alcohol licensing, including a new ‘economic growth’ objective. The event is open for FPH members www.fph.org.uk/events-cours...

New data shows that the rate of alcohol-specific deaths in England & Wales *fell* in 2024 by 7.8%, but remain well above pre-pandemic levels. This is the first fall since 2018, and is certainly good news, but the no. of people who sadly died from these causes in 2024 is still 1/3 higher than 2019

Interesting thoughts here on recent trends in young adult mortality in the US and Germany. The rise in alcohol deaths in both countries is something we've also seen across the UK. Just how long they might persist is a really important question for public health policy at the moment.

Want to know how to use MAIHDA to examine heterogeniety in policy outcomes? Here's a nice worked-through example! How does intersectional identity impact preference for in-person vs online GP appoinments? Has been great working with @healthfoundation.bsky.social colleagues on this :)

I was looking at some Scottish cause of death data yesterday and the extent to which transport accident deaths in young men have all but disappeared is pretty remarkable. Nice to find a good news story in this data for a change.

I spoke to @samuelacuff.bsky.social and @noahemery.bsky.social on their Addiction Psychologist podcast about the evidence on minimum unit pricing for alcohol. You can listen below: creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

The latest paper from our @nihr.bsky.social funded No/Lo Project finds that around a third of people use alcohol-free or low-alcohol drinks in attempts to cut down on drinking alcohol, but no clear evidence that they increase the success of these attempts. #AlcoholResearch #NoLo #AlcoholPolicy

Our new paper led by Inge Kersbergen finds no clear evidence that using alcohol-free or low-alcohol drinks increases the success of attempts to cut down on drinking. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Not a bad morning round these parts.

My wife requested a Battenberg birthday cake, so it would have been rude not to oblige. Pretty happy with how this turned out.

Plans to rapidly overhaul alcohol licensing in England and Wales have just been published. They're being sold as ‘tearing up outdated licensing rules’, but could seriously undermine democratic accountability and local control. The devil (as ever) is in the details. www.gov.uk/government/n...

Lots of coverage today on these new government proposals to reform the alcohol licensing system. I can see an inherent popular appeal to allowing pubs to stay open later, but I have a lot of thoughts about why these plans are an extremely bad idea.. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

📢 New paper published in @bmjtobacco-control.bsky.social Using electronic point-of-sales (EPOS) data, this study assesses purchase price of factory-made cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco across neighbourhood deprivation and urban/rural status in Britain. #TobaccoResearch #PublicHealth

Here's more on the key findings from our report published earlier this week which uses the most recent available post-pandemic data to estimate the health and financial toll of alcohol consumption in Northern Ireland. #AlcoholPolicy #PublicHealth

We've got a new report out today using new data from Northern Ireland to estimate Alcohol-Attributable Fractions (AAFs) and the number of hospital admissions and deaths each year in NI caused by alcohol. Plus, how these break down by age, sex and condition. sarg-sheffield.ac.uk/wp-content/u...

We've got a shiny new report (full of lovely graphs) all about the no/low alcohol drinks market in Great Britain. How big is the market compared to for standard alcohol and how has it grown recently, how do prices compare, who drinks these products etc. We've got answers to all these questions:

Last chart for now - an update to this comparison of age trends in drug and alcohol deaths in Scotland. As much as the population rates are similar for both causes, the age patterns are *very* different, with drug deaths peaking in the 40s and alcohol deaths in the 60s.

A couple of bonus graphs - comparing today's alcohol-specific death figures for Scotland, with drug-related deaths trends published last month. The good news is that both fell in 2024, although drug-related deaths remain *way* above their levels 20 years ago.

New figures from National Records of Scotland out today show that alcohol-specific deaths in Scotland fell by 7% to their lowest level since 2019, and are now back in a similar place to where they were before the introduction of Minimum Unit Pricing in 2018. This is obviously good news...🧵

Other exciting news - my brilliant colleague Lucy Burke has had her 1st PhD paper published in BMJ Public Health. It looks as associations between the reasons why we drink alcohol and whether we drink no- and low-alcohol drinks and has some important implications for the NHS 10-year plan.

We've just launched a website showcasing our research on pub closure! Each 'long-read' explores the story of a closed pub and its social and cultural significance, drawing on field visits, archival research and extensive interviews with those connected to it. Links below!

Extremely proud and a bit jealous that my excellent colleagues @fieldmatt.bsky.social and Inge Kersbergen have won this year's Ig Nobel Peace prize for showing that being a bit tipsy makes you better at speaking Dutch. arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Found a good bird on my commute this morning.

Scotland published their drug-related deaths figures for 2024 last week. For only the second time since 2013 they show a fall year-on-year, so while they remain very high by historical standards, this is at least a sign of progress in the right direction. Here's a 🧵of a few graphs...

I didn’t get an alert. Does that mean that I’m extremely cool, or on some hitlist somewhere?