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...

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...

Since 2015, the UK government has worked with the food industry to reformulate a wide range of food products to reduce sugar, fat and calorie content. The industry has been given the target of lowering the number of calories in certain products by 20% by 2025. The reformulation scheme was...

A new IEA publication explores the case for deregulating the gambling marketExecutive summary:The 2005 Gambling Act was intended to modernise gambling in the United Kingdom by replacing the anachronistic 1968 Gaming Act with legislation better suited to the twenty-first century. The 1968 Act had...

It is widely believed that healthy eating is relatively expensive whereas 'junk food' is relatively cheap. This has led to an assumption that poor diets and obesity are directly caused by economic deprivation. Some studies have compared the price-per-calorie of various types of food. The...