ACS

A new 'Units' campaign which aims to tell drinkers how many units are in their drinks and help them stick to their limits was launched today by Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo.

The Know Your Limits campaign - the biggest alcohol awareness campaign to date - kicks off its units strand with a series of adverts on TV, radio, billboards and in press, depicting the number of units in individual drinks. The Units campaign has an overall budget of £6 million for 2008/09. It will be followed by a £4 million binge-drinking campaign from the Home Office next month.

The campaign uses iconic imagery to help people understand how many units are in typical alcoholic drinks, and how to stay within the recommended daily guidelines for regular drinking of 2-3 units a day for women, and 3-4 units a day for men. The campaign will also warn people about how regularly drinking too much can damage their health.

New YouGov poll results out today show that English drinkers don't know exactly how much they are drinking. More than four out of five (82 per cent) claim to know what a unit of alcohol is, yet 77 per cent don't know how many units are in a typical large glass of wine.

More than half (55 per cent) of those questioned thought a large glass of wine (ABV 12 per cent) would contain two units, when it actually contains three. More than a third (35 per cent) did not know that an average pint of beer (ABV 4 per cent) contains two units, while nearly three out of five (58 per cent) did not know a double gin and tonic also contains two units.

Public Health Minister, Dawn Primarolo, said: "Excessive alcohol consumption is proven to play a significant role in the development of numerous diseases, including several cancers, heart disease and stroke. That's why this campaign is so important to the public's health."

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said: "I fully welcome this public information campaign. Combined with wider action across government, this is a vital measure in tackling all forms of excessive drinking."

To help people add up the units in their drinks, the Government has launched a new online calculator that can be downloaded to your desktop. For more information, visit http://www.nhs.uk/units.