Scottish women top of the UK league for drink-related deaths

WOMEN in Scotland are almost twice as likely to die from alcoholrelated causes as those in London.

Despite a crackdown on excessive drinking, Scotland has the highest death rate of any country in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Liver disease is the biggest killer of ‘ladettes’ who binge drink at the weekends and middle-aged women, who have developed a lifetime habit of drinking wine through the evenings during the week.

In 2014, more than 360 women in Scotland died from liver damage, alcohol poisoning and conditions including acute pancreatitis – some still in their twenties.

The latest figures show an alarming North-South divide between London, where the death rate is 6.8 per 100,000 women, and Scotland, where it is almost twice as high at 13.3 per 100,000.

There are fears that, although deaths are falling, Scotland still has a unique drinking culture, with women admitting in a study last year that they increasingly look forward to ‘wine o’clock’, which can start as early as 5pm.

Alcohol Focus Scotland chief executive Alison Douglas said: ‘In Scotland, we drink nearly a fifth more alcohol than people in England and Wales – and we suffer more harm as a result.’

Dr Margaret McCann, chief executive of rehab centre Castle Craig in Peeblesshire, said: ‘I think Scotland has a long tradition of drinking heavily, for men and women. To go out and enjoy ourselves at a party, we have to have a few drinks. Of course, the hen party and ladette culture really contributes to that as well. Women feel more freedom to go out and drink than they did 20 or 30 years ago. It is acceptable to get drunk in a way it wasn’t before.’

Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems director Eric Carlin said: ‘We know women are drinking more than they did in the past, which is to do with deliberate marketing by big companies and the development of the wine market.

‘People used to go home and have a cup of tea; now they go home and have a glass of wine.’

The Scottish Government has banned supermarket multi-buy promotions, in an attempt to stop people bulk-buying and over-indulging.

But the latest figures, from 2014, show female death rates from alcohol rise the further north you travel through Britain.

The lowest death rate was in London, at 6.8 per 100,000 of the female population, rising to ten in the West Midlands and 13.3 in Scotland.

The most common alcoholrelated causes of death north of the Border were alcoholic liver disease and cirrhosis or fibrosis of the liver.

When the four countries of the UK are compared, Scotland has the worst death rates for men and women, although it has also seen the fastest fall in rates since they peaked in the 2000s.

For men, the death rate stands at 31.2 per 100,000 of the population, with 784 dying from alcohol-related causes.

Public Health Minister Maureen Watt said: ‘A key factor in alcohol-related harm is affordability. This is why minimum unit pricing is such an important part of our measures to tackle the availability of cheap, highstrength alcohol that causes so much damage.’

‘A long tradition

of drinking’