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Reposted by Colin Angus

Addiction journal @addictionjournal.bsky.social · 23h

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Reposted by Colin Angus

Society for the Study of Addiction @addiction-ssa.org · 02/10/2026

In this episode of Addiction Audio, Dr Elle Wadsworth talks to Dr Abi Stevely about the prices of no- and low-alcohol (NoLo) drinks compared with regular-strength alcoholic beverages. Find the new episode: shows.acast.com/addiction-au...

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The age distribution of people dying from drug-related causes continues to shift towards older age groups. More than half of drug misuse deaths are now in the over 45s.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

There has, however, been a dramatic fall in deaths involving 'street' benzodiazepene (benzos) - just over a quarter of drug-related deaths compared to two-thirds in 2020. Meanwhile, the proportion of deaths involving cocaine has continued to rise - now over half of drug-related deaths.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The most striking story in the data is the dramatic rise in deaths involving the synthetic opioid nitazene. Over a fifth of drug misuse deaths involved nitazenes. There were none recorded as recently as 2022 (although they weren't routinely tested for back then).

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

New data on drug-related deaths in Scotland in 2025 published today by @natrecordsscot.bsky.social show that drug misuse deaths rose, although they remain some way below the levels we saw early in the pandemic.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Relative to overall inflation, some of the food and drink categories that saw big price increases in 2022/23 (hello butter) have started to come back down slightly. Alcohol, meanwhile, remains cheaper in real terms now than in January 2021 and prices have effectively fallen throughout 2026.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

So, there is a very realistic prospect that we face the worst of both words - falling revenue for gov't as low risk drinkers drink even less while harms remain high as heavier drinkers keep drinking as much as ever. Definitely one to keep an eye on...

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Meanwhile alcohol harms remain very high. There is more of a delay in getting these figures compared to sales, so they may yet come down. e.g. doi.org/10.1016/S246... (and we're doing more work on this...)

doi.org

Redirecting

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Although this is bad for government revenue, it *looks* like good news from a public health perspective if alcohol sales are falling. But the evidence from survey data is a bit more equivocal and suggests the falls might be coming largely from lighter drinkers e.g. doi.org/10.1111/add....

doi.org

Has alcohol consumption in England returned to pre‐COVID‐19 pandemic levels? A monthly population study, 2014 to 2024

Aim To determine whether alcohol consumption in England had returned to pre-pandemic levels by December 2024, after the initial rise in 2020 across the total population and subgroups. Design Monthl...

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Finally, what does this mean for government revenue from alcohol duties? Well, predictably, things are not good from a Treasury perspective. In cash terms (i.e. ignoring inflation) revenue from alcohol duty has plateaued since 2020. Adjusting for inflation, it's fallen by almost 25% since Aug 21.

A line chart showing total government revenue from alcohol duties with and without adjustment for inflation. The unadjusted line rises steadily, with a small plateau during the duty escalator 2008-2013, but has stabilised at just over £1bn/month since late 2020.

The inflation adjusted line shows a more gradual rise over the same period, then a very sharp fall during the cost-of-living crisis.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

- the lockdown drop in beer sales and corresponding bump in wine and spirits sales as pubs were shut - the fall in sales during the cost-of-living crisis is pretty similar for beer, wines and spirits, but cider sales have actually increased (albeit they are at a much lower level).

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

HMRC actually report the data separately by drink type, so we can follow the trends for beer, cider, wine and spirits. Lots of interesting things going on here: - the collapse of beer sales from the mid 2000s as drinking shifted away from pubs

A line chart, much like the previous one, but with separate lines for beer, cider, wines and spirits. Wines and spirits are following similar trajectories to the overall line (up, down, up a bit, down a lot). Beer clearances were much higher than wine and spirits in 1999, but fell a lot in the 2000s and have been only just above wine since then. Cider clearances are much lower, with a peak in 2010 then a gradual decline that has started to reverse since the start of the cost-of-living crisis.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

earlier than they otherwise would have, which is what accounts for the funky spikes up and down either side of the duty reforms in August 2023. But it's clear that these are just deviations from a downward trend. There's also a small spike in February 2025 when duty rates changed again.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I've taken a centered rolling 12-month average, because these clearance data are *very* seasonal and the raw data is just too noisy to pick out the trends. Clearance data also gets distorted around tax changes, because alcohol producers can choose to 'clear' the alcohol for sale (i.e. pay the duty)

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

With the recent publication of new alcohol duty data from HMRC, I wanted to look at how the volume of alcohol cleared for sale has changed in recent years. A brief spike post-lockdown, then a sustained drop from late 2021 onwards - exactly timed with the start of the cost-of-living crisis.

A line chart showing the 12-month centered rolling average volume of pure alcohol cleared for sale by HMRC from late-1999 to mid-2026. The chart shows a rise to the mid 2000s, then a gradual fall, coinciding with the Labour government's alcohol duty escalator. Once the escalator was removed in 2013 levels rose only very gradually with little change during the COVID lockdowns, then a brief spike in the summer of 2021 and a relatively sharp fall from ~0.68 litres per person per month to ~0.58 in 2026.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I'm sure there are interesting things that could be done comparing across years (and the data goes back to 1910) if one was so minded. R code for these plots is here: github.com/VictimOfMath...

github.com

Maps/SunAndRainUpdated.R at master · VictimOfMaths/Maps

Maps of stuff. Contribute to VictimOfMaths/Maps development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

..but other years of data just don't look as nice/interesting. I think it's because in other years the sunniest and rainiest places are more clearly distinct, whereas in 2021 there were more places that were both.

Another version of the same map, but with data for 2022 and that just looks less interesting. With much less black and much larger, unbroken, swathes of yellow in much of central and eastern England.

Basically just the same thing again, but with 2023 data

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

A few years ago I made this graphic of sunshine hours and rainfall across the UK. It's one of the the things I've made that has broken containment to the greatest degree and so occasionally turns up in strange places. Anyway, sometimes people ask me about updating it, so I have...

A 'bivariate' map of the UK with places that were sunniest in 2021 coloured in yellow, places that were rainiest in blue, places that were both sunny and rainy in black and places that were neither in grey. It shows generally the patterns you would expect (blue in Scotland and Wales, yellow in the south and east of England), but with interesting stories, like the sunniness and dryness of Scotland's east coast, or the sunniness and raininess of south Cumbria, north west Wales and much of Cornwall.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Along the way, I did also make this version, which just shows the deprivation profiles of every upper tier local authority in England.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Of course, almost as soon as I'd finished, I discovered that @opendatamcr.bsky.social had actually updated their version last year, although that predates the elections earlier this year which really saw the big gains for Reform. www.opendatamanchester.org.uk/revisiting-p...

opendatamanchester.org.uk

Revisiting political control and deprivation - Open Data Manchester

You may have noticed that the Indices of Deprivation for England were updated and released in November 2025, and this has given us an opportunity to revisit a project that

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Here's the original graphic. Lots of interesting changes, including the rise of Reform (across areas with no clear deprivation pattern), the collapse of the Conservatives and a big rise in councils with no overall control.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I have a cool graphic pinned up next to my desk from @opendatamcr.bsky.social showing all the local authorities in England in 2019 ordered by deprivation and coloured by political control. I was staring at it yesterday and wondered what it might look like now. So obviously I had to make it...

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Reposted by Colin Angus

Ste Jormur @stejormur.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Just came across this insane Wikipedia article about a case I'm surprised isn't more famous – a bonkers attempt by some monks to win a theological debate by faking an apparition of Mary, involving cross-dressing, drugs, a secret crane and an exploding chair, that ended in their public execution. 🧵

"Mary" in Jetzer's cell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jetzer_affair#

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

But Paul, I don’t think you understand. Those meetings are really boring…

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Reposted by Colin Angus

👻 Jack Djinn Wail 🧞 @jacktindale.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

One of the more interesting graphs I've seen, something that seems really counter-intuitive until you think about it. England only having about 15 percent forest coverage at the time of the Doomsday book (about half of what France and Germany have today) is wild, isn't it?

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Collating tax data is messy, so these are my best interpretations of the available data. All sources and more detail in the R code that produces this figure here: github.com/VictimOfMath... Let me know if you think I've got anything wrong or know about alcohol taxes in Colombia or Turkiye.

github.com

Routine-Data/OECDDutyRates.R at master · VictimOfMaths/Routine-Data

Plots and analysis of routinely published data. Contribute to VictimOfMaths/Routine-Data development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This reflects well-established evidence that both: 1) heavier drinkers are more likely than lighter drinkers to drink spirits 2) you can get more drunk more quickly on spirits, so they are associated with greater intoxication. So higher spirits taxes effectively target heavy drinking and harms.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

How do alcohol duty rates vary across OECD countries? Here's the excise duty (excluding VAT) for every OECD country I could find data for. Highest rates in the Nordic countries, Australia and the UK. Only Japan and (I believe) Korea don't have higher taxes per unit alcohol for spirits.

A bar chart showing the excise duty rate per unit of alcohol for beer, wine and spirits in most OECD countries. Many countries don't tax wine at all. Those that do, generally have higher tax rates per unit for wine than beer, and all countries except for Japan and Korea have higher rates for spirits than any other alcohol.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Your version is much prettier than mine ever were! I always quite fancied doing one for multiple countries at once, but never quite got round to handling the faff.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Today I will mostly be playing hide and seek on the Sheffield bus network, Jet Lag style.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

This really is tremendous. Birds are such glorious dorks, although not as dorky as the humans that have given them so many daft names.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Exactly this. I can only conclude it's because we are far too cool/weird/discerning, but it does seem very odd.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Obviously this has important implications for live music, since there aren't many gastropubs putting on open mic nights.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Thanks! That's a really interesting piece. Something I couldn't fit into our article is that although the *number* of pubs has been falling steadily, the number of people employed in pubs has actually risen. This is because we've seen plenty of consolidation - fewer, larger, more food-centered pubs

A simple line chart showing the number of people employed in pubs in the UK between 2009 and 2022. This sat around 400,000 from 2009-2013, but has been rising slowly since then. In 2022 there were 39,000 more people working in pubs than in 2009, a 9% rise.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

My colleagues and I have some thoughts about Andy Burnham's proposals to save Britain's pubs as well as his suggestion to fund this through increased business rates on vape shops and bookies. (My alternative title 'Andy Burnham: Pub Messiah?' was sadly vetoed)

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Cherry + dark chocolate for me please (but the cherry is definitely the star). Or a good mango sorbet.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

We can argue about whether the government guidance on descriptors for lower alcohol drinks should be changed, but claiming that it is a significant barrier to growth feels like a wild overclaim with absolutely no evidence to back it up.

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

This is such a weird non-story. The regulations relate specifically to the term 'alcohol-free', which should only be applied to drinks below 0.05% ABV. But there is no barrier to making drinks at 0.5% - e.g. Lucky Saint is 0.5% and their sales seem to be fine. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

theguardian.com

UK’s alcohol-free beer boom threatened by regulations, trade body warns

BBPA wants content definition for beer to be considered non-alcoholic to be changed from 0.05% to 0.5%

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Ha ha. (The actual answer is surely that people zebra stripe *sometimes*, not every time they drink)

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

For those of you that missed the news that Humphrey Smith, the eccentric autocrat of the Samuel Smith pub empire, had died recently... (and if you've no idea who he was, stop what you are doing and go and read this excellent article now www.theguardian.com/news/2024/de...)

theguardian.com

Humphrey’s world: how the Samuel Smith beer baron built Britain’s strangest pub chain

Since the 1970s, Humphrey Smith has acquired scores of pubs and historic properties around the UK. But time after time, he has left the buildings empty. Why has he allowed his empire to moulder?

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

...if that was the only factor that mattered? And how much more or less different to that are the actual differences that you've observed?

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Colin Angus @victimofmaths.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Maybe a better way of thinking about this - if there were *no* socioeconomic differences in cause of deaths at all, then the only difference in the cause distribution between socioeconomic groups would be because of differences in age at death. So, how different would the distributions look...

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