An estimation of the health and economic costs of alcohol use in Finland and the impact on these of the privatization of the Finnish government alcohol monopoly, Alko

Funding body:  Alko, Finland

Background:  We are collaborating with an international team of alcohol policy and public health experts to examine economic costs in public health impacts of the Finnish alcohol monopoly, Alko. Alko is a monopoly on the retail sales of all wine and spirits plus beers in excess of 5.5% alcohol/volume. The first objective will be to estimate the impacts of consumption for a recent year on mortality, morbidity, crime and productivity in Finland and apply cost values to these estimates. We also model the impacts on alcohol consumption related harm of two alternative policy scenarios: (i) alcohol policies are tightened so that, as now in Sweden, the monopoly is expanded to include beers with a strength greater than 3.5% alcohol/volume (ii) Alko is disbanded.

Progress to date: The report was released in October, 2019.  A journal article is under preparation.