The rise of neo-prohibitionism

Groups demand minimum alcohol price

There is a pressure group for everything and some have disproportionate influence. Recently, we have witnessed the rise of neo-prohibitionism. Our duty is higher for beer, wine and spirits than virtually anywhere else in Europe (except for Ireland) but, whereas consumption of alcohol has decreased in most countries since the 1970s, in the United Kingdom it has continued to rise. There is evidently no correlation between the price of alcohol and the number of units drunk. And yet Alcohol Concern called for the Government to consider higher duty on stronger drinks and charges of at least 50p per unit.

Emotive phrases are bandied about such as “epidemic of alcohol-related health and social problems” and tsunamis of disease. Social and personal problems generate drink addiction not the other way round. It infuriates me to read such lazy thinking and the conclusions drawn from it especially from doctors and scientists who should know better.

Research by the University of the West of England used by Alcohol Concern found that there would be 90,800 very precise actuarial deaths linked to drink by 2019 if current consumption continues. It was backed by the British Liver Trust (BLT), which said that drink-related deaths had trebled in the past 25 years and a price clampdown was the only way to stem the tide (another emotive term – are we dealing with unimaginable natural forces beyond our control?)

Lead author Professor Martin Plant said: “The UK has been experiencing an epidemic of alcohol-related health and social problems that is remarkable by international standards.

“It is strongly recommended that reducing mortality should be the top priority for alcohol control policy,” he said. “This could be done by introducing a minimum unit price of 50p which would cut alcohol-related hospital admissions, crimes and absence days from work.” Presuming this figure was done on the basis of some sort of market research that people would be less likely to buy drink to consume if it were to become more expensive, but unless that survey targeted the section of the population that is likely to be one of the 90,000 people who will die from alcohol abuse it is a meaningless and arbitrary one.

And how can you prove cause and effect here? Yes, a reduction in alcoholism would cut hospital admissions, crimes and so forth (and alcohol-related deaths, ya think?!); it does not follow that a minimum unit price of 50p will lead to that outcome. The only surefire prevention is to make alcohol prohibitively expensive, but, hold on, isn’t that prohibition in everything but name?

This one-size-fits-all approach is daft. Legislation is mud that is thrown at the wall hoping that something sticks. Should the family sharing a bottle of wine during an evening be lumped together with kids getting their jollies from alcopops or binge-drinkers who sink ten pints on a Saturday evening or young women who get blasted sucking down cocktails during happy hour or the recluse who drinks a bottle of vodka by himself at night?

Making drugs illegal doesn’t stop the desire to obtain those drugs; it simply leads to more drug-related crime as people try to finance their habit. The argument here, such as it is, seems to be that alcohol is both a drug and a poison and that people who abuse it will get ill and/or die. And this is a bad thing because it will paralyse our health services. This is true of anything – we don’t put extra taxes on chocolate or saturated foods because having an abusive relationship with food might be unhealthy. It is far more important to educate people to exercise restraint and not just to attack alcohol as the root cause of the problem. That deals (and not very well) with the symptoms.  People are the root cause of the problem.

To make things prohibitively expensive is the prohibitionist approach. You might as well ban fire because some people might stick their hands in fires or cars because one crashes into pedestrians.

Lest we forget prohibitionism almost invariably leads to greater crime and addiction. During the Prohibition in the States a profitable, often violent, black market for alcohol flourished. Powerful gangs corrupted law enforcement agencies, leading to racketeering. Stronger liquor surged in popularity because its potency made it more profitable to smuggle. The cost of enforcing Prohibition was high, and the lack of tax revenues on alcohol (some $500 million annually nationwide) affected government coffers.

The duty on alcohol is already extortionate and disproportionate. Evidently the existing cudgel of heavy taxation hasn’t materially transformed social behaviour. It certainly penalises wine merchants and restaurateurs rather than the supermarkets that can swallow the price rises. It is therefore an indiscriminate, ill-judged, ineffective tax. Since countries with the highest prices and most regulated markets have the highest incidences of alcoholism it makes little sense either.

As for supermarkets they will still deal in loss leaders unless that loophole is addressed. With the current price of grapes, the cost of transport and packaging and the punitive duty, wine is already expensive before the matter of margins is addressed. Supermarkets are simply trying to buy market share with their deals and can absorb duty increases and taxes. Instead of adding 50p why isn’t there a law to prevent deep discounting? Or selling wines below cost price? If the price of wines sold on the shelves more accurately reflected the real cost then this palaver could be avoided. The nature and purpose of discounting is to falsely create a psychological need to buy more alcohol (and therefore consume more).

If this means that the marketing budgets of the big drinks’ companies remain unused, or better still, are ploughed into education so much the better. We should get people to understand the value of what they are drinking; to appreciate flavour and quality. 1. Healthier drinking habits and 2. Getting to the root of social problems that prompt abusive drinking, is the progressive approach; taxation is clumsy and unproven and may even ultimately have the opposite effect to what was originally intended.