- We are drinking more than ever and 1 in 4 people are drinking at hazardous levels
- Alcohol is cheaper than it was 20 years ago
- There is a worsening epidemic of underage drinking
- Alcohol-related hospital admissions have risen by 69%
- Lager is cheaper than water
All effectively dispatched here by the Filthy Smoker. He concludes:
It is doubtful that even the British Medical Association really believes that charging 50p a unit or banning Guinness adverts will make the slightest difference to rates of consumption, but that is not really the objective. The objective is to officially identify drinking as 'bad' in the same way that smoking is 'bad'. From that starting point, all else follows.
The anti-drink campaigners are just a one trick pony. Their sole response to alcohol problems is price. Whether it be more tax or a minimum price, they don't care: make it dearer and the problems will be solved. Problem drinking is a multi-faceted problem with many causes, none of which are addressed by just increasing the price. It's like trying to cure measles by treating the spots. In the real world, an alcoholic will respond to a rise in the price of drink by eating less or not paying the bills, thereby multiplying the problems rather than solving them.
ReplyDeleteIn this respect our modern campaigners are little better than the old prohibitionists who saw drink as the root of all society's ills. They just couldn't see that problems caused by alcoholism were the symptom, not the cause, of the social ills they wished to resolve. Consequently they never addressed the real reasons. Despite their "scientific" credentials, the modern campaigners are at heart no different.