Vision: The North East will enjoy a culture and environment conducive to safe drinking. Its services for problem drinkers will be the best and most effective available.

We will establish a regional Office for the Safe Consumption of Alcohol to coordinate social marketing, lobbying and collective action in relation to alcohol for the North East.

• The Regional Advisory Group for Alcohol will be the steering group of the regional Office for Safe Consumption of Alcohol.
• We will develop comprehensive, integrated, alcohol treatment and support services, supported by a regionally agreed specification of best practice.
• We will expand services to deliver ready availability of brief interventions to reduce alcohol abuse in all parts of the region.
• By 2010, the North East should have the highest per capita availability of brief interventions in the country.
• Through social marketing approaches we will build the conceptual link between alcohol and domestic or public violence. Our aim will be to establish strongly in the perception of the region’s population the importance of that connection as part of a broader understanding that alcohol is not merely a choice of your own poison, but also a poison that damages those around you (secondary harm).
• In the longer term we will aim to build public antipathy to drunkenness, to promote an image of it as being both unhealthy and uncool.
• The Office will lobby for an increase in taxation on alcohol, particularly to reduce excess usage.
• The Office will lobby for greater regulation of alcohol outlets and restrictions on cut-price sales.
• The Office will report, on a local basis, levels of investment and action. In particular, it will highlight the relative provision of treatment across the region and between this region and the nation as a whole.
• The Office will publish an annual report about consumption of alcohol in the region.

Potential areas of action for RAG consideration: Promoting a non-bingeing economy – Lobbying for restrictions on prices of water and soft drinks when sold alongside alcohol – White van sales – Targets and standards for longer-term interventions