Background and aims: On 1 May 2018, Scotland implemented Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) of £0.50 per unit of alcohol with the aim to lower alcohol consumption and related harms, and reduce health inequalities. We measured the impact of MUP on the most likely categories of road traffic accidents (RTAs) to be affected by drink-driving episodes (fatal and nighttime) up to 20 months after the policy implementation. Further, we checked whether any association varied by level of socio-economic deprivation.
Methods: An interrupted time series design was used to evaluate the impact of MUP on fatal and nighttime RTAs in Scotland and any effect modification across socio-economic deprivation groups. RTAs in England and Wales (E&W) were used as a comparator. Covariates representing severe weather events, bank holidays, seasonal and underlying trends were adjusted for.
Results: In Scotland, MUP implementation was associated with 40.5% (95% confidence interval: 15.5%, 65.4%) and 11.4% (-1.1%, 24.0%) increases in fatal and nighttime RTAs, respectively. There was no evidence of differential impacts of MUP by level of socio-economic deprivation. While we found a substantial increase in fatal RTAs associated with MUP, null effects observed in nighttime RTAs and high uncertainty in sensitivity analyses suggest caution be applied before attributing causation to this association.
Conclusion: There is no evidence of an association between the introduction of minimum unit pricing for alcohol in Scotland and a reduction in fatal and nighttime road traffic accidents, these being outcome measure categories that are proxies of outcomes that directly relate alcohol consumption to road traffic accidents.
Keywords: Scotland; alcohol; interrupted time series; minimum unit price; natural experiment; road traffic accidents.
© 2023 The Authors. Addiction published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society for the Study of Addiction.