Minimum pricing for alcohol - stupid and immoral in equal measure

The Welsh government has (having tiptoed back from banning e-cigs) decided that it's keen on introducing a minimum unit price for alcohol:

A law to set a minimum price for selling alcohol in Wales has been unveiled.

Ministers believe tackling excessive drinking could save a life a week and mean 1,400 fewer hospital admissions a year.

Pricing is seen as a "missing link" in public health efforts, alongside better awareness and treatment.

Under a 50p-a-unit formula, a typical can of cider would be at least £1 and a bottle of wine at least £4.69.

A typical litre of vodka, for example, would have to cost more than £20.

The Welsh Government has not yet decided what the price will be, however.

This policy is popular with the New Puritans and temperance campaigners who populate public health departments these days. And, sadly, politicians who should know better cluster around these officious fussbuckets thinking that 'clamping down on drinking' is, in some way, a good idea and popular.

But minimum unit pricing is, in equal measure, stupid and immoral. Here's why stupid:

Alex Loveland, a recovering alcoholic who supports people with dependency, is worried that it will not help them.

"They're going to try to get alcohol by any means necessary and I think it will put more strain on very underprivileged people," he said.

So here's a fellow who, I guess, knows a little bit about problem drinking. Imagine the typical alcoholic - faced with more expensive booze, what are they going to do? The idiot fussbuckets who are proposing a minimum unit price think this:

"The most substantial effects will be experienced by harmful and hazardous drinkers, who are more likely to consume cheaper and higher-strength alcohol products." 

Yes folks, these people think an alcoholic is going to drink less because the price goes up. You know, I've a feeling that addictive demand is pretty inelastic - just a guess but if I've a compulsive need for booze, I'm going to fail to feed the kids before I don't get that booze. The policy is stupid.

It doesn't make any difference how you look at this outcome, it is also immoral to propose a policy that has such an effect. To introduce any public policy that, by design, results in more risk and more harm for vulnerable people cannot be justified. Plenty of public policy (any examination of our benefits system over time shows this) has unintended and harmful negative affects but most of it is not harmful by design. Minimum unit pricing is intended to increase risk and harm among problem drinkers - it is its sole purpose. Or rather among those problem drinkers who can't afford £20 for a bottle of vodka, which I suspect is a minority of such drinkers.

Others will point out that this policy of targeting only cheaper drink is an attack on the less well off. On the poor old man who buys a couple of the cheapest cans to drink on Sunday afternoon while he watches the racing on the telly. Or the single mum on benefits with two kids who gets respite from them on a Thursday and celebrates with a bottle of Lambrini, some cheap snacks and reality TV.

Us better off folk will be fine. We'll still be able to afford malt whisky and craft beer. And we'll feel better - or so the public health nannies think - knowing we've dealt with the problem by making poor people pay more for their moderate drinking. As I said - stupid and immoral.

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A good day for organised crime...

Over in the secret hideaways of the organised crime bosses, cognac glasses are chinking, cigars are being lit - the toast is; "David Cameron and the Coalition Government".

Never before has there been a government that cared so much for the interests of the organised criminal. And today was a red letter day for those Dons, drug lords and criminal masterminds:

...minimum unit pricing, ensuring for the first time that alcohol can only be sold at a sensible and appropriate price

Sold at those prices by the legitimate trader. But sold at way below those prices by the smuggler or the moonshine merchant. The man with the van is rubbing his hand with profitable glee as he eyes up the chance to sell cheap booze to kids. The drug smugglers are looking at vodka as a kinder, less judged import. And the big crime lords are grinning from ear to ear and ordering the new yacht.

And then:

The government is to change the law to allow restrictions to be imposed on the interest rates charged for so-called "payday loans".

Honest Joe has got his baseball bat out from the cupboard and it treating it with linseed oil. All those poor folk refused loans by Wonga or Provident present a renewed sales opportunity. These legal lenders had killed his business but no more - now he can go back to lending cash and demanding repayment with menaces! And smashing the occasional kneecap - well it goes with the game.

A good day for organised crime - soon to be followed by plain packs for fags and a new smuggling and counterfeiting cash windfall!

Well done Dave!

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"I don't approve of you drinking" - Cameron's message to the English

The softening up process - the drip drip of judgemental leakage that typifies Cameronism - continues as we're warned about the new "Alcohol Strategy":

The plans, being driven by David Cameron, have raised fears that middle-class households will bear the brunt of measures supposedly aimed at troublemaking youths and other anti-social drinkers. 

Now when this all started it was driven by the recycling of old photographs in the Daily Mail. You know the ones I mean - attractive girl, drunk, draped over a bench. All accompanied by the dire description of our town centres as ridden with drunken violence. So minimum pricing was born - not to make us healthy but to get rid of the unsightly tramp, to discourage the baseball-cap wearing youth from quaffing cheap cider at the park gates and to end "pre-loading" thereby making town centres civilised places where people promenade between tea shops rather than stagger from bar to bar.

But it's not about that now. It's about you and me sitting at home, not bothering anyone and enjoying a glass of wine while watching the X-Factor:

“People shouldn’t think this is just about yobs getting drunk in parks and kids preloading before going out — this is going to affect respectable middle-class people popping into Waitrose for a couple of bottles of sauvignon blanc at the weekend.” 

So from a (misguided and misplaced) policy aimed at those buying cheap booze - by definition these folk don't shop at Waitrose let alone Booth's - we now have policies targeted at the myth of increasing alcohol consumption. It seems we will get a consultation - but it won't be about whether these proposals are a good or bad idea or even whether they will actually achieve what they claim.

Mr Cameron this year backed a 40p minimum unit price, but it is understood that the Home Office will next week seek views on a range of options for a minimum price for a unit of alcohol.

The policy is confused, won't achieve its stated aims, is illiberal, will promote rather than reduce crime and will close down a load of corner shops. And it will annoy people - not much but enough to flake a few more off the Tory branch. These people won't take to the streets in protest. They won't fill the pages of the Guardian or the BBC's bit of the airwaves with their voice.

But they will give both barrels of their opinion to the next Tory canvasser. And I don't blame them.


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Not looking good for minimum pricing...

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It's not looking good for the nannying fussbucket's favourite policy of making beer more expensive for poor people:

The European Commission has challenged Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond’s law which imposes a price hike on booze - a plan which Mr Cameron hoped to follow in England and Wales.

Officials in Brussels told Scottish ministers they had to withdraw legislation to impose a 50p-per-unit price on alcohol because it was ‘not compatible’ with the EU Treaty.

Spain, Italy, Portugal and Bulgaria are also believed to have concerns about Scotland’s plans as they export drink to Britain.

Jolly good news - I'll be having a beer to cheer the (please let it be true) demise of this nasty proposal.

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Nannying fussbucket of the week: Councillor Gordon Castle

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You see the folk running Northumberland have spotted a business opportunity. Thousands of Scots cruising across the border to buy up supermarkets full of cheap booze once their especially stupid and puritanical government has introduced a minimum price for said booze. For the Northumberlanders there's a worry:

"Shops in Berwick, Alnwick and Morpeth with easy access to the A1 should be preparing to accept a huge increase in trade but I expect, without an advertising campaign, Carlisle with its easy motorway access will win this race."

So, to stop this lucrative, economy-enhancing trade going to Cumbria a campaign is proposed. Cllr Castle thinks this irresponsible:

 "We want to promote Alnwick, we want Scottish tourists, but we don't want booze tourists,"

Nor, one guesses does Cllr Castle want the jobs and businesses that come with this lucrative trade (at least until our own daft government falls from its tree and introduces a minimum price itself).

However, Cllr Castle may be something of a fussbucket - only wanting the right sort of tourist - but the Scottish government are complete loons when they say this:

...it is highly unlikely that a minimum price, that will only affect a proportion of alcohol sales, would make it worth their while to travel as it would cost people in terms of fuel and time."

How much beer and cheap vodka can you get into the back of a transit? Let's say 1000 bottles of mid-strength lager at 35p per unit (roughly a quid a bottle) - that's 15p per unit cheaper than in, say, Edinburgh (perhaps 40p per bottle). If I sell out of the back of my van at £1.20, I'm clearing £200 per trip. It's a roughly 160 mile round trip. Looks like I'm in profit.

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