New data suggests the crisis is not just one of drinking, but of intervention arriving too late.
New data taken in 2024 by the Office for National Statistics shows that 1,185 people died from alcohol-specific causes in Scotland in 2024. Alcoholic liver disease accounted for three-quarters of all UK alcohol deaths.
Castle Craig, which has treated patients from all across Scotland for over 35 years, says the picture is not dominated by sudden tragedy: the figures point to a crisis of delayed intervention.
Key findings
Scotland’s alcohol-death rate (standardised by age) in 2024 was 20.9 per 100,000 of the population, compared with 13.8 per 100,000 in England. That makes Scotland's rate roughly one and a half times higher, a gap that has persisted for more than two decades.
Across the UK, 7,288 of 9,809 alcohol-specific deaths in 2024 were caused by alcoholic liver disease. That is 74.3% of deaths in...
