Alcohol Consumption and Harms Dashboard

Official statistics

Published: 24 June 2025 (Latest release)
Type: Statistical report
Author: Public Health Scotland

Alcohol

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) supplements the Alcohol Consumption and Harms Dashboard (ACHD) with a new dataset of alcohol retail sales and pricing estimates for years 2017 to 2024. In addition, there are updates to existing datasets within the ACHD on alcohol related crime and justice figures to include those relating to financial year 2023/24. There is also an update to the dashboard's alcohol consumption statistics which incorporates responses from the 2023 edition of the Scottish Health Survey (SHeS). In addition to these updates to the datasets within the Alcohol Consumption and Harms Dashboard this release is accompanied by a short report which provides contextual analyses of the alcohol retail sales and pricing estimates and the most recent wholly alcohol attributable hospital admissions and mortality statistics.

Main points

In 2024, 9.0 litres of pure alcohol were sold per adult in Scotland, equivalent to 17.3 units per adult per week.
Throughout the period from 2017 to 2024 the volume of pure alcohol sold per adult per year in Scotland has fallen steadily from 10.6 litres in 2017 to 9.0 litres in 2024.
The majority (76%) of alcohol sold in 2024 in Scotland was sold in off-trade premises such as supermarkets and other off-licenses. While total off-trade sales have declined since 2017, the proportion of alcohol sold in the off-trade has increased from 73% in 2017.
Throughout the period from 2008 to 2023 the percentage of adult Scottish Health Survey respondents who identify as being non-drinkers has steadily increased from 12% in 2008 to 20% in 2023.

Graph: Volume of pure alcohol (litres) sold per adult (16+) per year in Scotland and England & Wales, by trade sector, 2017 to 2024
Line graph showing trends in on-trade and off-trade sales in litres per adult per year in Scotland and England & Wales. The graph shows that, for both on-trade and off-trade, trends have generally declined across the time series. In 2020, off-trade sales increased while on-trade sales decreased, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions.

In Scotland, on-trade sales have declined from 2.9 litres per adult in 2017 to 2.2 in 2024, while off-trade sales have declined from 7.7 in 2017 to 6.8 in 2024. In England & Wales, on-trade sales have declined from 2.7 in 2017 to 2.2 in 2024, and off-trade sales have declined from 6.6 in 2017 to 5.9 in 2024. Off-trades sales in Scotland are consistently higher than off-trade sales in England & Wales across the time series. — Image caption **Volume of pure alcohol (litres) sold per adult per year, by trade sector, Scotland and England & Wales, 2017-2024**

Background

The alcohol retail sales figures presented in this release are estimates. Data for these figures were obtained from market research specialists Nielsen IQ and Circana for 2017-2024. The volume of pure alcohol sold (litres) was provided for the on-trade by Nielsen IQ and for the off-trade by Circana. Copyright for the data remains with the data providers. The off-trade alcohol sales data presented in this dashboard are not comparable with data published in previous MESAS Monitoring Reports, as those data were obtained from a different data provider. For a comparison of different off-trade data sources for estimating alcohol retail sales, please see this report: Estimating population alcohol consumption in Scotland: the impact of using different sources of alcohol retail sales data. A correction to the plot representing the percentage of people where drug or alcohol dependency was identified as a support need amongst those assessed as or threatened with homelessness has been included in this release. In the December 2024 release of the ACHD this plot was incorrectly displaying the percentage of cases of homicide with known drug or alcohol status from the Scottish Government's Homicide Statistics 2022-23 publication. Furthermore, an issue has been identified in the Scottish Health Survey figures describing mean weekly units of alcohol consumed for specific demographic breakdowns in 2013 and 2014. As a result, the time frame for figures presented in this release of the ACHD has been adjusted and does not include 2013 and 2014 figures on the 'Mean weekly units consumed' and 'England and Wales comparison' pages within the 'Consumption - Self-Reported Alcohol Consumption' section. Investigations are currently ongoing with contacts at the Scottish Health Survey and these figures will be reinstated upon conclusion of these enquiries in a later release of the ACHD.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be Summer/Autumn 2025.

General enquiries

If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please email phs.alcohol@phs.scot.

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Older versions of this publication

Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.