The benefits of innovation are unpredictable and hard to quantify. Fear of adverse consequences can lead to excessive emphasis on risk avoidance, leading to regulation that holds back beneficial innovation. The experience in tobacco harm reduction illustrates this.Innovative reduced-risk...

One in ten bottles or cans of beer sold in the UK have not had duty paid on them and there are growing reports of counterfeit spirits being sold by licit and illicit retailers. HMRC seized almost ten million litres of non-duty paid alcohol in 2010/11, a rise of 30 per cent in two years. The UK...

This report aims to provide estimates of the size and value of the UK's illicit cannabis market in 2016/17, the size and value of the market if cannabis were legalised and regulated, and the annual tax revenue that a legal cannabis market would yield. Our best estimate suggests that 255 tonnes...

[Foreword:] The theoretical advantage of single-issue pressure groups is that they can form broad coalitions, gathering people from across the political spectrum who need not agree on anything other than the group's single issue. For example, Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) is a...

According to a popular theory in public health, limiting the availability, affordability and advertising of alcohol reduces per capita consumption of alcohol which, in turn, leads to a decline in alcohol-related deaths. The theory assumes that a decline in average consumption will lead to a...

European Commission spending millions on pro-EU lobby groupsExecutive summary:With public confidence in the European project waning, the idea of initiating a 'civil dialogue' with the public emerged in the mid-1990s as a way of bolstering the EU's democratic legitimacy.Citizens have not been...

This study estimates the direct costs of alcohol use to the government in England, including the NHS, police, criminal justice system and welfare system. Taken together, they amount to a gross cost of £3.9 billion per annum (in 2015 prices). Revenues from alcohol taxation in England amount to...