from Alcohol price crackdown to tackle Scottish binge drinking - Telegraph

Alcohol price crackdown to tackle Scottish binge drinking

A minimum price on a unit of alcohol is to be introduced under radical plans to tackle Scotland's binge drinking epidemic.

By Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor

Last Updated: 8:42PM GMT 02 Mar 2009

Alcohol will be priced according to the number of units in an attempt to tackle binge drinking in Scotland

Alcohol will be priced according to the number of units in an attempt to tackle binge drinking in Scotland Photo: Simon Roberts

Scottish ministers argued the measures, the first of their type in the world, were needed to stop shops selling cheap lager and cider for "pocket money prices".

Campaign groups urged the Government to roll out minimum pricing across the rest of Britain, but the drinks industry predicted it would have little effect other than to punish ordinary shoppers.

Alcohol misuse costs the NHS and justice system around

Its going to be a pain in the fucking arse. We already get nannied to fuck and pay through the nose for petrol and tobacco. But the SNP government in Scotland needs to find revenue streams because their populist early policies like abolishing the bridge tolls are comign back to bite them. They nearly fell to bits when they couldn't pass a budget earlier in the year. Up the minimum prices for alcohol and get the tax revenue from alcohol sales up. Consumption won't go down. People will just start paying

Edited March 3, 200917 yr by Duggeh

It looks like they are going by the same model that is applied here and it will not make a dent in the consumption, no matter how you tax the stuff. We just celebrated the 20th anniversary of beer drinking (it had been banned since the 1920's and allowed again on March 1 1989) and the annual consumption has more then doubled in those 20 years even with a single beer from a store costing some 2$ when the ISK is weak and much more when it isn't.

Celebrate World Socialism!

^ Unfortunately, Duggeh will now find it more expensive to drink to that!

(Which I guess was the idea of the legislation, founded on the potentially flawed idea that demand for alcohol in Scotland, is indeed elastic, as opposed to being effectively inelastic, as Duggeh suggests)

i would argue that it's pretty inelastic everywhere it's legal.

FTFY.

I have but one thing to say as an ex commercial fisherman on a dry vessel in the Bering Sea.

Pruno

I have but one thing to say as an ex commercial fisherman on a dry vessel in the Bering Sea.

For a second, I thought I'd wandered back into the buggery thread.

Pruno

That's nasty.

That's nasty.

Well obviously I was kidding, but it is cost effective. I've never been much of a drinker, but I did bring myself to taste it once out of curiousity, and it was pretty repulsive stuff.

They do the same thing in Canada with tobacco products. Government raises the taxes (usually whole dollars at a time), smokers go more broke. It's a cash grab and a transparent one at that.

I won't complain - the way I see it, I'm helping alleviate the drain on our (FREE) healthcare system by paying taxes through the teeth for the very product that clogs our terminal care wards. I just wish they were more honest about the whole thing. The day a bureaucrat ACTUALLY cares about the well-being of the public is the day I eat a bag of glass and shit a crystal brick.

Civil rights are not the same as individual rights.

Welcome to the Bigs, 'Viper. Have fun. I know your skin is thick enough.

Now the important question is whether you will be attending CJ09 in LA in a couple of months? We will send stevieo up there personally to shame you into showing up, so you might as well commit now.

Home made ginger beer for the win!

Actually, a friend of mine (whose father is a wine expert) brewed his own beer. The result was occasionally tasty and mostly unpalatable. It was good going though. Other friends had better luck with alcoholic ginger beer.