Britain's alcohol problem.

[Stan_Lite]

How would you tackle it?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8465939.stm

Just read this article and have heard similar stories bandied around for a while now - the Scottish parliament have been discussing minimum pricing on alcohol for a while now.

I'm not convinced minimum pricing is the answer. On the surface it seems like a good idea - if you make it more expensive to drink alcohol, people may drink less of it. One of the biggest problems with this is that you will be adversely affecting moderate sensible drinkers whose alcohol consumption causes no problems at all - people like me.
Minimum pricing affects people like the little old lady who likes a glass of sherry a couple of times a week. She saves up money from her pension to spend £3 on a cheap bottle of sherry that lasts her a fortnight - hardly a problem drinker. In comes price fixing and now she has to pay £7.50 for her bottle of sherry (50p per unit is the figure being quoted) and she can no longer afford her little pleasure.

A lot of the problem drinking can be attributed to ridiculously cheap alcohol. Supermarket offers like 18 cans of Stella for a tenner and then 2 for 1 shooters at the pub afterwards is a recipe for disaster really. The question is, if you make it more expensive to get wasted, will it stop people or will they just find the money somewhere and get smashed anyway?

Don't think I'm being sanctimonious here, I enjoy a drink and I like to get off my face occasionally too - it's therapeutic. When I do it though, I don't get into fights and I don't go screaming and shouting through the streets like a loony which seems to be popular nowadays. More often than not, I just sit grinning in the corner, babbling. Also, I don't do it every weekend - it's a rarity, not a way of life.

The more I think about it, the more I think it's a bad idea. In order to be effective, prices will need to be set at a level that will adversely affect the wrong people - the people who don't cause problems.

I don't have the answer. I do think that retailers should be forced to be more responsible but the people who are causing the problems - the drunks - need to be held accountable in some way also. After all, it was their idea to get drunk in the first place - nobody forced them.

What other solutions are there?

[Desmo]

I think this is a typical government reaction. They're looking for a quick fix when in reality, this is a problem that has been caused over a far longer period. I don't think price fixing will work as the people who probably cause most of the problems (youngsters) have far more disposable income so will carry on drinking anyway. This needs a long term solution which is far more likely to be found in more discipline in society in general, especially from a younger age.

[Briggykins]

I completely agree with everything you said. It annoys me that I'm going to be paying for people who can't control their alcohol intake. I know that's a somewhat centre-right opinion for a lefty like me, but I can't help it.
For me the solution is already in the law - don't serve drunk people. Admittedly it won't help supermarket promotions, but enforcing the law that obviously pissed people don't get served in pubs would definitely help.

[Stan_Lite]

That would certainly help but then the onus is on bar staff to police that and make judgements on who should be served. Asking people on relatively low pay to make judgements like that on top of checking IDs, may be asking a bit much.

[Kitten]

I think this is a typical government reaction. They're looking for a quick fix when in reality, this is a problem that has been caused over a far longer period. I don't think price fixing will work as the people who probably cause most of the problems (youngsters) have far more disposable income so will carry on drinking anyway. This needs a long term solution which is far more likely to be found in more discipline in society in general, especially from a younger age.

^^ +1

It's an alteration in attitudes. I never saw my mum or nan drinking at home when I grew up - except for the odd sherry at Christmas, so to me, it's something you do at a party, or at the weekend, not every night. Most of my friends have a bottle of wine at the dinner table, with their kids - so dinner becomes drinking time. Every night. I'm amazed how much people drink in this country, it actually really astounds me when I look at the figures, or more importantly, the behaviour of my friends and colleagues. I think people drink at home a lot more now than they used to, so kids are brought up around it more (in general) - making it a part of everyday life.

[TinkerBell]

^^ +1

It's an alteration in attitudes. I never saw my mum or nan drinking at home when I grew up - except for the odd sherry at Christmas, so to me, it's something you do at a party, or at the weekend, not every night. Most of my friends have a bottle of wine at the dinner table, with their kids - so dinner becomes drinking time. Every night. I'm amazed how much people drink in this country, it actually really astounds me when I look at the figures, or more importantly, the behaviour of my friends and colleagues. I think people drink at home a lot more now than they used to, so kids are brought up around it more (in general) - making it a part of everyday life.

I agree that young people aren't being taught correctly the rights and wrongs of drinking, and that it is the norm for them.

However I don't completely agree with what you have said. My Grandy drinks all the time, glasses of wine from about lunchtime. I spent everyday at her house except for the weekend, so I grew up seeing her drinking all the time, but I was always offered to taste whatever they were drinking, so I never felt like it was something I couldn't have when I was older. I have never found the interest in getting drunk or drinking for the sake of it. I have never been paralytic and have always stopped drinking before I get very drunk. It isn't just because it seems like the norm for kids to see. It is how they are brought up and how things are explained to them.

[Belmit]

What I don't understand is the paradoxical nature of drinking here and in other European countries. As mentioned, some families in the UK have kids that are brought up with drinking all around them on a daily basis at home, but in other countries this is also the norm, with kids even being given wine with meals. Why don't these other countries have the same kind of problem with binging and the anti-social behaviour that follows? Is it simply the parenting, and how kids are introduced to it? Could it be a simple difference of being told as a child 'no, this is an adult's drink, you can have some when you're older' rather than 'yes, try it, you probably won't like it but it's up to you'? I'm sure we're all well aware of how much more attractive something becomes as a child when we can see something but we're told we can't have it.

[Kitten]

Once I was past about 9 years of age, my mum and stepdad used to drink wine if they had friends round or at dinner on special occasions. I was always allowed to try it, and just didn't like it. But I still went out and got hammered in alleyways with my mates when I was 14, drinking Thunderbird or Maddog 20/20.

I'm not saying everyone who is around people who drink will drink - in fact, some will be turned off for life by it - however I just think people drink a lot more at home a lot more often now - and that will have an effect on their kids for good or bad.

I also think a lot people in the UK have a very blinkered view of life 'abroad' and how people behave. I was in Rome last year and you could have been in any British city, there were Italian girls & boys, bladdered, arguing in the street - hell, they sell Wine and beer in Burger King/McDonalds. It's the same in Greece, the Greek lads out bladdered fighting with each other over girls, same in Malta. It's not so different over here - the sensible people have sensible attitudes wherever they are in the world.

[Belmit]

I always suspected that was the case, but had just never seen any of those sorts of incidents abroad. Maybe I've just been to some anomalous areas! The centre of Zagreb, for example, had teenagers hanging around everywhere but never once did I feel like they were going to behave in the same way that makes me apprehensive about passing the same kind of groups in the UK. I also saw people drinking everywhere, but not one incident of anti-social behaviour.

[Kitten]

It's a bit of an unfair comparison, but we were on Rhodes when the local team beat their bitter rivals to win a football trophy. There were riots - vicious riots, the police had no chance of controlling it. It's nothing like I've never seen in all my years attending footy matches and something we absolutely wouldn't tolerate if it happened - the closest we've come was when the we had the trouble in Manchester with Rangers fans a few years back and that was nowhere near as bad and was condemned completely.

I suppose what I'm saying is that different cultures have different problems, they might not have such obvious problems with anti-social behaviour but there's other things that make it hard to compare. I mean, I'm sure Spain doesn't have the same level of binge drinking, but in some areas, they kill and torture bulls for sport, they throw donkeys out of towers and ride horses through fire to make the Gods favour them. In Rhodes (again) you can go into any part of the Old Town and find gangs of lads hanging around on scooters and raging through the towns at 4am in the morning. I just think it's very hard to compare from country to country, because they're so different it becomes a bit pointless. I'm sure there are lessons to be learned on all sides though.

[Knipples]

As some of you know, my Dad is an alcoholic, a functioning one though because he has a job and gets on with life, just he spends his evenings getting out of his tree. Some evenings he drinks more than others, but I can't remember a single evening in the last 10 years where he hasn't been drunk or on his way to getting drunk.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that the price of alcohol wouldn't affect him in the least, because he would buy it anyway due to his dependency on it. He doesn't tend to go out drinking (maybe about a third of the time) he stays home and drinks wine/spirits/beer.

I wish he would accept he has a problem, because he is no longer the Dad he was when I was younger, but I stopped trying to make him see that a long time ago.

[Treefrog]

I find it hard to accept that a minimum price could ever be an effective solution to binge drinking.
And if a minimum price were to be set, where would the revenue go? Retailer, manufacturer, government? And (like Stan) I'd hate to see a bottle of Bells selling for a similar price to Laphroaig Quarter Cask ;)
After all, it's not the chemical called alcohol that's at fault, it's the consumer and the way they (mis)use it. Target the actual problem, don't just hammer every consumer with the same charge regardless.
If such a thoughtless charge were imposed I imagine that the amount of free hedgerow fruits available for home brewing will decrease dramatically.

[iCraig]

Upping the price has nothing to do with targetting alcholism, it's about taxation.

Any half baked socialist will realise that if an alcholic wants a drink, he'll have one, if prices go up, he'll spend more and he'll neglect other things to direct more money for the drink. The government don't want to stamp out a major source of revenue, it's like they're attempts to stamp out smokers by upping tobacco tax. They know smokers are addicted and will just pay the increase to continue smoking. It's also unfair to punish light and moderate drinkers.

The true solution to any social dysfunction is to tackle it at source. We need a better education on drinking, and better culture that isn't surrounded by needing to get smashed to have fun or be sociable. It needs a root reform of how we market, sell and percieve alcohol, it won't happen overnight, it's generations of small changes. No government will back it as they'll be effectively pissing more money down the drain than a nation of drinkers ever has.

[Kitten]

^^ absolutely. Put the price of alcohol up and the children of alcoholics will suffer, condemning a whole generation of kids to a dreadful childhood, and quite possibly ruining their adult lives and prospects at the same time.

[Joe 90]

Aye, making booze more expensive won't change anything, it'll just lead to tramps finding it harder to get drunk.

My 'alcohol problem' is caused by Belgium. They produce beer that is too good to resist!