Alcohol-related hospital admission rates....what are we going to do about it?

The Department of Health has published data for 2006/07, using a new methodology, that says hospital admissions attributable to alcohol were over 800,000 in 2006. It's all on the North West Public Health Observatory website. There's also a load of information about how that figure was calculated, which is super.

What we need though, dare I say, is a few thoughts on how we actually reduce alcohol-related hospital admissions, especially since:

"The most common reasons for hospital admission in males and females were hypertensive diseases, mental and behavioural disorders due to use of alcohol, and cardiac arrhythmias.

Mental and behavioural disorders due to use of alcohol, which included admissions for a wide variety of disorders relating to alcohol use, were the leading cause of alcohol-related admissions in males under the age of 55."

Mental and behavioural disorders is one thing, we are familiar with those. Hypertension is the realm of public health, GPs etc. And they don't really do alcohol, do they?

So, rather than bothering the NHS, the government is going to reduce admission rates by getting the alcohol industry to play nicely. Hmm...