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Drinks made as no- and low-alcohol alternatives to alcoholic drinks, known as “nolos”, seem to play little role in the alcohol consumption of young Brits, according to research published this week.

There is currently no clear evidence for nolo drinks taking the place of alcohol products to any significant degree in any age group. This means they lack the solid evidence base of public health measures around price, availability and advertising.

Brits between 16 and 25 are three times more likely to start drinking alcohol than nolos, with nearly two-thirds of them opting to try alcohol, found a survey funded by Alcohol Change UK. It also found little evidence that nolos change young people’s alcohol consumption for better or worse.

But parents do have a significant impact. “Most primary carers interviewed thought it was acceptable for young people to drink some alcohol within the family home, with some believing it is their responsibility to introduce their adolescent children to alcohol,” the survey found.

The charity pointed out that these parental attitudes are held despite “strong evidence that an alcohol-free childhood is the safest option”. Drinks made as no- and low-alcohol alternatives to alcoholic drinks, known as “nolos”, seem to play little role in the alcohol consumption of young Brits, according to research published this week.

There is currently no clear evidence for nolo drinks taking the place of alcohol products to any significant degree in any age group. This means they lack the solid evidence base of public health measures around price, availability and advertising.

The survey found some evidence to support worries that alcohol-branded nolos are cementing alcohol brands in the minds of adolescents, with most of them familiar with Heineken, Guinness and Gordon’s alcohol-free spinoffs. This may mean they are more likely to try the alcoholic primary brands.

Brits between 16 and 25 are three times more likely to start drinking alcohol than nolos, with nearly two-thirds of them opting to try alcohol, found a survey funded by Alcohol Change UK. It also found little evidence that nolos change young people’s alcohol consumption for better or worse.

But parents do have a significant impact. “Most primary carers interviewed thought it was acceptable for young people to drink some alcohol within the family home, with some believing it is their responsibility to introduce their adolescent children to alcohol,” the survey found.

The charity pointed out that these parental attitudes are held despite “strong evidence that an alcohol-free childhood is the safest option”.

AR: Alcohol Review has long argued for scepticism around well-funded hype around nolos. There is no evidence that they help reduce alcohol harm, while their media presence distracts from consideration of well-evidenced policies. They also provide a way for alcohol brands to reach young audiences, notably by promoting alcohol-free versions of an alcohol brand at high-profile global sports events like F1 and the Olympics. ■

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Gender-based and sexual violence often involves perpetrators who are under the influence of alcohol, with cases spiking around holidays and sports events. Sheila Gilheany of Alcohol Action Ireland presents the evidence and some policies which would help tackle the problem. See more from AR2026. ■

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Alcohol is well known to be among the biggest causes and contributors to liver disease, but there is still more to be found out. Alcohol Review spoke to Professor Zobair Younossi of Georgetown University, Washington DC about a recent Lancet paper in which he and his co-authors shed more light on the relationship. ■

By Phil Cain

A survey this week highlighted a 29% reduction in how often users of GLP-1 diet drugs consume alcohol and that they spent nearly a third less on alcohol in hospitality settings and a fifth less at home.

People working to reduce alcohol harm may feel like celebrating, but we should be wary of taking such findings at face value, not least because they are promoted by the alcohol industry consultancy KAM, in partnership with the UK alcohol industry’s Drinkaware charity.

Self-serving narratives and hype often appear to fill gaps in our knowledge. This has happened around alcohol-free beer and other nolo drinks. GLP-1s unproven effectiveness looks set to spawn a new wave of misleading narratives.

The alcohol industry’s promotion of GLP-1’s potential to reduce alcohol consumption should be taken with a shovel or two of salt. Industry public relations efforts typically focus on diverting attention from evidence-based policies. Increasing alcohol’s price and reducing its availability and marketing have been shown to reduce alcohol harm across the population. GLP-1s have no such evidence behind them.

Promoting GLP-1s’ potential to reduce alcohol consumption also provides the alcohol industry with a tale of woe it can use to plead for special treatment in government policy debates. This may help the industry win renewed tax breaks or a loosening of regulations. The evidence shows these wins for the industry would increase the harm its products cause.

It is worth asking a few questions when headlines appear about GLP-1s based on surveys or other weak evidence, especially when they come from alcohol industry sources. Below are a few ideas. [Please, feel free to suggest more in the comments section of the post on LinkedIn.]

• A survey is no replacement for a full clinical trial. There has been no large-scale randomised control trial to confirm the anecdotal findings or to assess the side-effects when used for alcohol consumption.
• One possible side-effect may result from the fact that not everyone who wants to drink less alcohol would benefit from eating less. In fact, a significant proportion of heavy drinkers are malnourished and may become more malnourished if they take GLP-1s to tackle their alcohol drinking.
• It is also worth asking the degree to which the lower spending on alcohol is the result of the drug’s pharmaceutical action and how much the subtraction of £300 or so a month from a household’s disposable income to pay for GLP-1 medication. This might, in fact, simply be more evidence of the known effect of increasing alcohol’s price as a proportion of disposable income.
• People taking GLP-1s are a self-selecting group of people making a conscious and costly decision to try to improve their health. It is possible such a group may reduce alcohol consumption even without taking GLP-1s, when compared to a sample of the general population.
• These drugs show the potential to treat existing alcohol problems rather than avoiding problems before they start, so are inferior to “upstream” policies.
• The enormous cost of GLP-1s falls on the consumer or, potentially, health insurers and taxpayers, rather than on the producers of the alcohol products that are the source of harm. Is this allocation of cost either efficient or fair? ■

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Parents should aim to shape household norms so that “alcohol is less central, less emotionally loaded and less available” to minimise harm to their children, according to Sergey Alexeev of the University of New South Wales. Alcohol Review caught up with him to find out more. To read the paper discussed here see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.70084 ■

The UK’s official statistics office today said it added alcohol-free beer to the list of goods it uses to monitor inflation to “represent an uncovered area of the alcohol market”.

It unclear how a product containing no alcohol represents ones containing alcohol. Nobody knows the extent to which alcohol-free beer replaces alcoholic products. Its price is also not subject to alcohol tax or minimum pricing.

“There is currently no clear evidence for no-lo drinks taking the place of alcohol products to any significant degree,” a group of experts wrote in January.

AR Hype around the evidence-free idea that alcohol-free beer is reducing alcohol harm is arguably distacting attention from policies which are known to work. ■