Two Pints Of Lager and a Packet Of Crisps, Please.

Two Pints Of Lager and a Packet Of Crisps, Please.

I’ve just watched Question Time. I know, I know, I’m a sad political nerd. (In my defence, there are a lot of us.)  Now it’s quite common for me to get angry enough watching that show that I shout at the TV set, but tonight I was left quite literally flabberghasted as I watched the madness unfold before me.  The issue which has created my frustration is the idea, proposed for Scotland at the moment, that there be a minimum price per unit of alcohol.

The suggestion before Scotland is that there be a price – perhaps 40p – that is the lowest any outlet can charge for a single unit of alcohol.  The effect, as pointed out on the program, would be to turn a £3.00 bottle of cider into a £6.00 bottle of cider.  To my abject amazement, every single contributor on the panel thought this a fine idea.  Not a single one of the diverse and politically-mixed panellists spoke against the proposal with even the slightest scepticism.  Not even David Davis, for whom I’ve long had a great deal of respect.  Worse still, the audience seemed unanimous, or near to it, in their spontaneous applause.  A doctor pointed out that the medical profession, the police, the authorities in all their forms were agreed that this was the best way forwards.  Of all the many issues debated tonight this was the only one on which there was a concensus.

Has everybody quite literally lost their minds?

In my most humble opinion this idea is not just misguided, not just a bit wrong, not just needing a little tweaking - it is absolutely stark staring mad.

Where to start? 

The first thing nobody seems to realise is that price controls of this type on alcohol would have one immediate effect. They would create an immense black market for alcohol.  Home brewed alcohol, imported alcohol, stolen alcohol – the law of supply and demand would go into overdrive as every minor criminal, ne’er-do-well and chancer leapt on the easiest quick buck ever made.  None of this alcohol would be subject to the sort of health, safety and quality controls that normal sales undergo.  There’d be no checking the age of the recipient.  It would be cheap, easy to find, and line the pockets of precisely the sort of people we want less of, not more of, in our society.  The police would then have to deal with not just the drunks and the disorderlies, but the organised and disorganised criminals that would spring up to meet their demand.  And the government and the public would get not a penny of tax from any of those sales.  Talk about a fiscal black hole!  Have we learnt nothing from prohibition?

The second thing nobody seems to mention is that there is actually no problem with alcohol, per se.  Otherwise, wouldn’t we need to ban alcohol swabs in hospitals?  Alcohol rub?  Methylated spirits?  It is not the chemical itself which is the core of the matter, it is the misuse of alcohol.  This is a decision made by the user, not by the alcohol.  The bottle does not have an evil intellect which seeks to mislead the user.  Society’s big problem lies with that minority of people who abuse the drug.  But instead of questioning what is wrong with society that people now feel the only escape is to drink themselves into oblivion, we’d rather just slap another batch of regulation on everything.    

The suggestion that price controls will cause “problem drinkers” to cut back is ludicrous and laughable.  Do these people not know any problem drinkers?  An increase in official price will do no such thing.  When it comes to getting alcohol, severe problem-drinkers are incredibly creative.  They’ll break into places and steal it, or the money to buy it.  They’ll buy it from the aforementioned black market.  They’ll brew it themselves if need be.  Alcohol abuse at this level is a severe addiction.  Does an increase in the price of heroine cause people to shrug and say: “Ah well, I better quit then?”  Not a bit of it.  This is a recipe for a massive increase in crime, not a decrease.

The third white elephant in the room is the fact that even if price controls were able to have some influence on drinking, who would it influence?  Notice that the proponents of this wonderful idea are the doctors, the lawyers, the police chiefs, the politicians, the mostly middle-class audience of Question Time.  Of course they think it’s a wonderful idea.  Expensive alcohol isn’t such a big deal when you’re on £40K, or £60K or £100K a year is it?  You can still afford your couple of bottles of red wine a night, or your expensive bourbon.  It is, by and large, the poorer section of society who will be bullied by this measure.  I wonder how strong the support will be in those quarters?
  
I, for one, am really sick and tired of this lazy, monotonous drone from “up above” which seems to presume that each time they perceive a problem they must legislate to stop it.  Never a thought is given to whether this situation has been created by previous ill-conceived legislation.  Or the bizarre shape into which successive governments have twisted society.  And so, ever onwards, more and more things are done to us “for our own good” or “in the name of a better neighbourhood” – but what they really mean is a society for a priveliged overclass of authoritarian ‘leaders’.

I’m not saying there’s no problem to be tackled here.  I’m saying that price controls are not the way to tackle it.  Perhaps if we hadn’t made it possible for drinking establishments to open 24 hours a day we’d be able to police the situation better – like we used to?  Perhaps if we hadn’t smothered, criminalised and nannied society so much, or encouraged everybody to get miles into debt, or made everybody feel so impotent and disempowered there wouldn’t be quite so much despair?  Maybe if the police could lock up the odd drunk until the morning without filling in an hour’s worth of paperwork – like they used to when somebody was too inebriated to think - we might nip many problems in the bud?  Maybe if we had more police on the beat?  But that would cost money, take time and take effort – and it’s so much easier to draft another law, isn’t it?
  
I am not a regular drinker.  I have a few drinks maybe half-a-dozen times a year and get properly ‘merry’ when some function or event merits it, and outside of that I do not drink at all.  There is nothing in this argument that would hurt my pocket.  But I would give a stern warning to the (apparently many) people who think this is a clever plan.  Do you not realise, up there in your ivory towers, just how much this recession is hurting people?  Do you not appreciate that the unemployment, job-loss and over-taxation is eating away at national morale?  Don’t you understand that for an enormous mass of people, a few cheap drinks are the way to wind down and relax, to meet a few friends and to forget about the problems that beset them?  It does not matter whether you approve of that or not.  It’s not your place to approve or disapprove of the decisions of consenting adults.  This enormous sleepy giant is slow to anger.  But if you pursue this plan to its conclusion I suspect you will see just how quickly the giant can awaken, and just how angry it can get.