Alcohol sales in Scotland have fallen to their lowest level in 25 years after the introduction of price controls, figures show.

Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, welcomed the figures, which also reveal a 3% fall in the consumption of alcohol last year, and said they showed the introduction of a 50p a unit minimum price in May 2018 was having an effect. It was a promising start in tackling Scotland’s difficult relationship with alcohol, she said.

“There are, on average, 22 alcohol-specific deaths every week in Scotland, and 683 hospital admissions, and behind every one of these statistics is a person, a family, and a community badly affected by alcohol harm,” Freeman said.

“Given the clear and proven link between consumption and harm, minimum unit pricing is the most effective and efficient way to tackle the cheap, high-strength alcohol that causes so much harm to so many families.”

Last year, Scotland became the first country to introduce minimum pricing for all alcoholic drinks although some elements of pricing controls have been used in Canada and other countries for more than 40 years.

In Scotland, supermarkets and off-licences are banned from selling cheap or discounted spirits, wine, beers and cider, although online sales from suppliers outside Scotland are not affected.

The new data from NHS Scotland’s monitoring and evaluating Scotland’s alcohol strategy (Mesas) project showed, however, that Scots still buy 9% more alcohol per head than people in England and Wales. But the gap is closing because alcohol sales grew in England and Wales last year.

Scots still drank an average of 9.9 litres of pure alcohol last year, the figures showed, equal to 19 units per adult per week, or nearly 40 bottles of vodka a head. The chief medical officer’s advice is that while drinking no alcohol is best, it is safest not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis to keep health risks at a low level.

Minimum pricing has meant the average cost per unit is higher in Scotland, at 59p against 55p in England and Wales.

The data does not cover a full year of minimum unit pricing in practice and an official evaluation of its effectiveness is not due to be published until later this year. Even so, the early figures are likely to stoke calls for the UK government to introduce minimum pricing in England. The Welsh government is due to introduce a 50p minimum price this year.

The Scottish government is due to consider raising the minimum price next year; it has been under pressure from the Scottish Liberal Democrats and others to set the price at at least 60p a unit. The 50p price was first set in 2012 but the policy was delayed by legal battles with the Scotch Whisky Association.

Willie Rennie, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, said a 60p or greater minimum unit price would have a much more significant effect on alcohol misuse. “The value of the 50p price was eroded by inflation in the years the policy was caught up in the courts,” he said. “It is time to realise the policy’s original ambition.”