Pointing to the costs to the public purse of alcohol misuse in Scotland (£900 per person per year, apparently), members of the Scottish National Party last year attempted to introduce measures to set minimum prices for alcoholic drinks at 45p per unit. That attempt was thwarted, but now, armed with a clear majority in the Scottish Parliament following last May’s elections, they’re coming round for a second attempt.
That they are willing to do so shows a severe lack of imagination in policy making by Scotland’s ministers. Yes, alcohol misuse is a problem and yes, it costs the public purse. But regressive measures that hit the poor not the irresponsible only serve to highlight the prejudicial assumptions being made by ministers in pursuing this policy. Indeed, the Scottish Government has insisted that the measures would not affect the ‘quality drinks favoured by responsible drinkers’. In other words, in the eyes of Scottish ministers, anyone buying cheap alcohol from supermarkets must be doing so with the intention of drinking irresponsibly, and not merely looking for the lowest price for the product they want (a perfectly rational thing to do).
The policy will see the price of a 2litre bottle of supermarket own brand cider more than tripling from £1.20 to £3.75, and a 70cl bottle of gin rising drastically from £6.95 to £11.85. Reading the information on the Scottish Parliament’s website (here), a very rosy picture is painted as regards the expected outcomes. “The Chief Medical Officer believes that – like the smoking ban – minimum price would save lives within a year” we are told. No mention is made of the fact that the high taxes on cigarettes have led to a thriving illicit trade in tobacco across Britain: at it’s peak in 2000/1, illicit cigarettes made up 21% of the total trade. Likewise, the experience in Scandanavia, where alcohol prices are high, is that people simply turn to making their own alcohol at home, with all the implications for quality and safety that that holds. There is no reason to believe that the Scottish experience will be any different.
Ultimately, if people wish to drink alcohol for a low price they will find a way to do so. If the Scottish authorities wish to disude irresponsible drinking patterns, they’d do better to look at countries that do combine low alcohol prices with responsible drinking, such as Spain and France, and ask themselves: what are they doing that we are not? The answer is likely to be complex, revolving around societal attitudes. But by applying some imaginative long term thinking to the problem, ministers are much more likely to come up with realistic, practical solutions that lead to positive change, rather than simply picking the pockets of the poor for the sake of being able to claim to have ‘done something’.
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