The British Liver Trust has recently joined forces with the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) and the British Association of the Study of the Liver (BASL) to create Alcohol Liver Action, a group that will attempt to bring together experts in alcohol liver disease to provide clear information and opinion on the health repercussions of excessive alcohol consumption in the UK.
The ALA is primarily a lobbying group which will play an active part in raising awareness of alcohol harms within Westminster village and in the media generally.
Alison Rogers, Chief Executive of the British Liver Trust and member of the ALA said: “It’s great to get this off the ground. We really hope to add to the ‘behaviour change’ debate and make governmental and other opinion leaders more aware of the dangers that alcohol presents to the liver. We find that the debate on alcohol is often centred around social harms and issues relating to law and order; we want to create more focus on health harms and the health cost to the UK population of our dangerously increasing levels of consumption.”
For more information or to tell us your thoughts to the ALA might be able to help, please email: ala@britishlivertrust.org.uk
A study entitled, ‘Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse’, published in the Lancet, was conducted by a team led by Professor David Nutt, psychopharmacologist and member of the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) from the University of Bristol and Professor Colin Blakemore, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council.
It assessed 20 recreational drugs in nine categories on their harm to the individual, to society in general and whether they induce dependence.
The 20 drugs included heroin, cocaine, cannabis, ecstasy, LSD and tobacco. Alcohol was termed more lethal than ketamine, amphetamines and solvents.
Alcohol falls just after cocaine, heroin, barbiturates and street methadone in the ‘most harmful’ drugs list produced by the study.
Click below to go to the abstract of the study:
Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse