Recent bulletins from the 
drug and alcohol bank:
Alcohol taxes fall, deaths rise in Finland
Simulations predicting what might happen are the main indications in the UK of how alcohol price and tax changes will affect health, but from Finland we have evidence that how heavily alcohol is taxed really does affect alcohol-related deaths.
IBA and prevention Findings
Alcohol brief interventions seem bargain for England
Implications of this simulation study for England are that health planners would be irrational not to get GP practices to screen every adult patient for hazardous drinking the next time they visit; it would slash future health spending while improving health – but how solidly founded are the assumptions built in to the calculations?
Learning by example transforms doctors’ recognition of problem drinking
When an addiction psychiatrist modelled good alcohol assessment practice while accompanying doctors once a week during their general medical ward rounds, the result was steeply increased rates of correct diagnosis and referral to treatment, offering an alternative to possibly unwelcome training or direction of clinical staff.
Official UK aid to decisions on alcohol prevention and treatment
Online flowcharts from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guide planners and practitioners dealing with alcohol use disorders through choices of strategies and interventions on prevention, brief interventions, alcohol treatment, and treatment of associated medical conditions.
Treatment Findings
Alcohol treatment could save 12,000 lives a year in EU
How many deaths would we prevent by extending effective treatment to more of the EU’s dependent drinkers? Reach 40% and in just one year prevent nearly 12,000 deaths would was the estimate – but how realistic is that, and is treatment really that effective?
Drug triples post-detox alcohol abstinence rate
From Germany the first trial to rigorously test high doses of the muscle relaxant baclofen for the treatment of dependent drinking found post-detoxification drinking reductions of a magnitude rarely seen; safety issues remain, but it seems these can be managed with close monitoring and individualised dosing.
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