Wilson, Luke B;
Stevely, Abigail K;
Kersbergen, Inge;
McGrane, Ellen;
Moore, Esther C;
Pryce, Rob E;
Brown, Jamie;
(2025)
Current and future trends in the consumption, sale and
purchasing of alcohol-free and low-alcohol products in Great
Britain, 2014 to 2023.
Addiction
, 120
(8)
pp. 1655-1665.
10.1111/add.70041.
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Abstract
Background and Aims: The UK Government has committed to reducing alcohol consumption by 2025 through increasing the availability of alcohol-free and low-alcohol (no/lo) drinks. This study estimated current and future trends in key indicators of the availability, sale, purchasing and consumption of no/lo products in Great Britain. // Design: Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average models of market research data and repeat-cross-sectional survey data on alcohol consumption. // Setting: Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), January 2014–December 2025. // Participants/Measurements: The study used population-level data on no/lo product availability and sales in the on-trade (e.g. bars, pubs, clubs, restaurants), as well as the off-trade (e.g. supermarkets and convenience stores) (2014–2023), continuous household panel data on purchasing (n ≈ 30 000; 2018–2023) and repeat-cross-sectional survey data on consumption (n ≈ 80 000, 2020–2024) to construct monthly time series for seven indicators. It described current trends and forecast them to December 2025. // Findings: All indicators showed increasing trends to 2025. The forecast level of each indicator in December 2025 was: Indicators 1 and 2: Percentage of alcoholic drinks sales volume that is no/lo products: 2.3% (50% Prediction Interval 2.1%–2.9%, off-trade) and 1.0% (50% Prediction Interval 0.8%–1.1%, on-trade); Indicator 3: Percentage of pubs selling draught no/lo products: 6.8% (50% Prediction Interval 6.1%–7.5%); Indicator 4: Percentage of households purchasing off-trade no/lo products but not alcoholic products: 12.3% (50% Prediction Interval 10.9%–13.6%); Indicator 5: Percentage of higher alcohol purchasing households that are increasing off-trade purchasing of no/lo products: 24.3% (50% Prediction Interval 21.3%–30.6%); Indicator 6: Percentage of households increasing off-trade purchasing of no/lo products and decreasing purchasing of alcoholic products: 1.8% (50% Prediction Interval 0.8%–2.8%); Indicator 7: Percentage of risky drinkers using no/lo products in most recent cut-down attempt: 42.4% (50% Prediction Interval 37.2%–53.3%). // Conclusions: Consumption of alcohol-free and low-alcohol drinks is increasing in Great Britain but predicted to remain low in 2025 (estimated at 1.0% of on-trade and 2.3% of off-trade alcohol sales volume in servings by the end of 2025). There is some evidence that people are using no/lo drinks in attempts to reduce their alcohol consumption.
Type: | Article |
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Title: | Current and future trends in the consumption, sale and purchasing of alcohol-free and low-alcohol products in Great Britain, 2014 to 2023 |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.1111/add.70041 |
Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70041 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Addiction published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society for the Study of Addiction. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Alcohol drinking, consumption, forecasting, purchasing, time series analysis, zero-alcohol |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Behavioural Science and Health |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205490 |
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