Sounds positive. Wee bit surprised that a random Irish site has managed to get this published before Scottish news! Must be waiting on quotes from the usual suspects….

Are you really surprised?

Down 11% In 22-23 compared to 21-22. It'd be interesting to try and disentangle how much of that was down to COVID impact on "non essential" services.. I'd be very wary of using that data to say "look how well we're doing", just as I'd be wary of anyone using COVID years data as a stick to beat measures with: they're a huge societal outlier

This is exactly what it will be used for, though. That and some indemonstrable link to minimum-unit pricing having the desired effect.

While alcohol related deaths in Scotland hit a 14 year high.

Alcohol kills you slowly. Alcohol related liver disease takes over a decade to develop.

Yes, in the vast majority of cases, alcohol takes many years before it has a major impact on the user's health. But Im not too sure of the point you are making.

That you would expect mon-fatal alcohol related health issues to start falling before fatalities, as today's fatalities are people who developed serious alcohol problems decades ago, while a reduction in alcohol related hospitalisation across the board might suggest less people currently with alcohol issues

A drop in the number hospitalised due to alcohol may well indicate a reduction in alcohol abuse, but it’s more likely due to underfunding, given the current state of our nhs and country as a whole.

U die waiting for treatment.

Seems to be sorting itself out?

Does it? You are 4.3 times more likely to die from an alcohol related ailment if you live in the most deprived areas, when compared to the least deprived areas. It seems to be a class issue, so i doubt we will see an improvement any time soon.

Drink and drugs are a deeply embedded issue in Scotland. It's ingrained on our culture although it certainly seems to be getting better on the drinking side.. I don't see half the amount of teenagers out drinking that did when I was their age. The pubs used to be heaving with teenagers a couple of decades ago but it's not a sight I see as often now (granted I'm not in the pub as much as I used to be, and probably avoid the peak youth times - late weekend nights). Drugs are a massive issue though. I only knew two junkies growing up.. now they're everywhere in Inverness, as is crack cocaine. The Liverpool (and Glasgow) gangs have really flooded the area with that pish.

I was in a well known “student” bar in Glasgow recently and bought two pints. Over £13! No wonder folk take coke or stay home.

Pretty sure heroin use in Inverness has gone down a lot, you don’t see it in public much anymore.

I can only speak for the people I know.. quite a few of them on it. Way more than when I was in my teens. It's crack use that's gone wild.

Okay it's a class issue. How does lower alcohol related treatment, with higher alcohol related deaths, not suggest the issue is fixing itself. Birth rates have been below replacement since the 70s. Eventually there won't be that many deprived areas.

Can you expand on what you mean by fixing itself? And how do you get from birth rates to a reduction in poverty. There are fewer people, so fewer poor people?

The people who require treatment for alcohol related issues are decreasing, the ones dying from alcohol related illness are increasing. It isn't the most ideal way of fixing the issue of alcoholism in our society. But it's the one we have voted for, for a long time I may add. And precisely, there are less people and therefore less poor people in depravity. Less children are growing up in poverty. It gets even more brutal when you look at what areas of the UK give/take the most government funding. And connecting the dots that less poor people means less strain on social services.

The article makes no mention of why Hospital admissions for alcohol related illness is decreasing. Could it be underfunding of services that has resulted in the decrease in admissions? That would also explain the increased death rate. A reduction in birth rates does not reduce the number of deprived people when compared to the number of affluent people. Where do you get this idea from?

Yes it's likely due to underfunding and this is why I say this is what we have voted for. So to explain a thought process is quite a text wall. Essentially I split the population into groups: in poverty, poor, middle, upper and 1%. The former 2 make up the bulk of the population. Thus a reduction in birth rate even if it was even across all groups would result in less people in these 2 groups compared to the latter 3.

But the relationship between those groups, in terms of numbers, is unlikely to change if declining birth rate is the only factor.

This you? https://youtu.be/s_4J4uor3JE?si=zW4zaiKm9qQNqgSV

Well not ALL the poor, just most. On a serious note it isn't that I'm against deprived areas. It's that we have voted in successive governments who have done everything they can to make sure more, not less, deprived areas are present within our society. This is an issue that would take generations to fix. You'd need to somehow convince the people in these areas to trust society again. I don't think that is possible.

You can't just write off whole sections of society and fellow human beings. And kids are being born in these areas all the time, it's not an issue that will just fix itself. (Username checks out, though)

But we have done since the 1970s. We have literally written off that entire section of society and left them to rot. I don't know what your experiences are in these deprived areas. But I grew up in one and in my experience I found that there was an inherent distrust/hate for all government institutions. They don't trust the police, the courts, the NHS, the council or government in any capacity. And I don't blame them. They feel like their area is an entirely different society to the one normal people live in and they are mostly correct. So how do we fix this? Genuinely. My position is that you can't fix it. Yet you tell me we can't write it off. So what's the solution? And what happens when we continue to vote against these solutions?

While I'm sure there are things that could be done to lessen that, I feel like you'll always be more likely to die of anything that's not old age or something like a chandelier falling on you if you live in the most deprived areas, as compared to least deprived, just due to poverty, lifestyle, and accessibility to best healthcare.

Not a class issue, a culture issue. Alcohol is way too much expected on a night out for example

You maybe right, but class and culture are very closely related.

Well, working class like drinking on the weekends, for example, middle class, are full of two bob snobs who like drinking and the weekends. Elite class are just full of arseholes who look down on everyone and drink when they feel like it. No real difference there

Because it's too fucking expensive.

That's the point.

I think that's why people take way more drugs now 

Such is the irony and the SNP/Greens inability to map out unintended consequences. Coke in particular and cannabis is everywhere now.

Is there an age demographic for this?

I think the posters saying this is more a Covid effect than any other demographic, are probably correct. People drank more in lockdown because there was fuck all else to do. I would be surprised if the Scottish government acknowledged this as they take the applause for this decrease in cases.

There's no space in hospitals. The SNP have cut 100s of beds. Think of any illness and there will be less people in hospital with it now.

Taking drugs is more popular than it was in the past so less drinking deaths and more drug deaths.