When doing my weekly round-up, I came across one post that I wanted to go into a bit more detail on my response. The BMA have outlined steps that they believe would help curb the culture of binge drinking. As much as I hate to disagree with a group who probably know a hell of a lot more about it than me, I’m going to disagree with one of their points regardless. I firmly believe that a minimum unit price is not the way forward in dealing with binge drinking or alcoholism.
But I should also point out, that this is not the policy of the party. The federal Liberal Democrat Party back this idea. An amendment to the Welsh Liberal Democrat conference against minimum pricing was defeated, meaning we do not have a set policy at present. But I’m not the type to write what the party believes anyway….
I do however agree with the BMA on labelling though. It is only recently that there has been a significant increase in the number of manufacturers that detail how many units are in each bottle or can. It can be quite a shock to see what the difference in alcohol is between a higher and lower strength lager for example, or in different sizes of cans or pints. I’d always thought of a can of Carlsberg and a pint of Stella to be around the same, a unit known as ‘one beer’ in the technical depths of my mind. But a can of Carlsberg contains 1.67 units of alcohol whereas a pint of Stella contains just short of 3 units. They might both be ‘one beer’ in my head, but one pint of Stella is equal to almost two cans of Carlsberg.
Something that should also be included on labels is the calorie content of these drinks. Better labelling on food has altered the way I shop. Things that I thought would be healthy turn out not to be, but some things turn out not to be as bad. Pointing out to people the effect that their drinking has on their belly could encourage many younger people to have a few less. Alcohol can contain a huge amount of calories. Ten pints and a kebab is more than an adult male’s recommended daily calorie intake after all.
Medically, there is no difference between the affluent professional who can afford to get pissed on good quality red wine every night whist telling themselves they are being civilised, and the guy who gets hammered on Carling in his house whist watching The Bill cause that is all he can afford. Both are damaging themselves, but only one will be put off by higher prices.
There are many who are responsible drinkers that will find themselves unable to indulge should minimum prices be introduced. I will declare an interest here and state that may even affect me. I can’t afford (after years of student loans and forced debt bondage by a Labour government) to go out as often as I’d like. Drinking in Cardiff can be expensive. So I am quite partial to drinking in my house with friends. It’s cheaper, and I can have just as good of a time in as out.
Minimum pricing would punish me for doing this, whist not affecting many who do have a problem. Those who will be most affected will be the poorest in our communities. Anyone with an alcohol problem and a bit of spare cash will not feel an impact.
It seems that inherent within this idea is an assumption that we trust middle class drinkers more than we trust working class drinkers. This proposal creates a bias in the system against the poor. The government would be saying ‘you’re not allowed booze, but the rich are’ without noting who is actually abusing it.
The problems with alcohol are not based around supply, but around out attitude and culture towards it.
Minimum pricing would not stop those who wish to abuse alcohol. They will still be able to afford to if they so wish, except for maybe the poorest of the poor. Why should responsible but poor drinkers pay for the excess of middle class alcoholics, who will still be able to afford their habit?
It is regressive and illiberal and would fly in the face of the current strategy of liberalising drinking laws in this country. 24 hour drinking has not entirely worked, but that is because it takes more than a few years to change drinking culture in this country. The aim of changing our attitude to alcohol is the right approach. Allowing pubs to open longer will eventually improve the British way of drinking, but it will take time. To start putting regressive policies in place on alcohol will only make this take longer.
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