Drink like the French (Image: Hemis/Alamy)

SOARING rates of alcohol abuse and liver disease in the UK can be reversed by copying French and Italian strategies of cutting cheap booze from supermarkets.

So say a group of health researchers, whose analysis shows that since 1986, UK death rates from liver disease, 80 per cent of which is alcohol-related, have more than doubled from 4.9 to 11.4 per 100,000 people. In France and Italy, the opposite has occurred, with death rates of 50 per 100,000 in the early 1960s falling to less than 10 per 100,000 today (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60022-6).

The solution, says lead author Nick Sheron at the University of Southampton, UK, was to take cheap alcohol out of the system. “France has done the impossible, reducing liver death rates while increasing the value of its alcohol economy,” he says. “The UK drinks industry needs to start selling on quality, not quantity.”