Alcohol - Minimum Pricing

Written by Colin Breed and published in Lowdown Article on Wed 13th Jan 2010

Last week the Health Select Committee produced another valuable contribution to Parliament in its report on alcohol and its effect on public health. Among a number of recommendations the one which gained most media interest was that which referred to the sale of alcohol based on a minimum price per unit. Apart from the relaxation of licensing laws it is the price of alcoholic drinks which has contributed most to the significant rise in drinking, particularly amongst young people. Two litres of cider in a plastic bottle can now be bought for around £1.20, the equivalent of 34p a pint. A minimum price would render such sales illegal. A figure of 40p for a 10ml unit of alcohol would increase this bottle's cost to £3.36 and save an estimated 1100 lives per year.

The Health Committee are not alone - medical associations and the police all want to see alcoholic drinks get more expensive. In the past 50 years British consumption of alcohol has doubled and unsurprisingly cirrhosis of the liver in Great Britain has increased while declining in other European countries. The price of alcohol is about 70% more affordable now than it was in 1980. Figures for drinking are complex. Per-capita consumption is not especially large, our volumes are the 8th highest in Europe, but we have two other factors. One is the relatively high number of teetotallers; some 12% of Britons never touch drink which means national average figures are spread over a smaller pool than elsewhere. More significantly, drinking is done in occasional binges rather than frequent sips.

Support for price rises also comes from perhaps a more surprising sector - publicans! Whilst attempt to increase alcohol duties are totally opposed, a minimum price would suit pubs nicely because virtually all its drinks already come well over the 40p per unit baseline. It was of course the supermarkets who hit the roof, denouncing the recommendation in the media. They have gradually encouraged drinking at home with cheaper and cheaper booze, and it is they who will be hardest hit. The sensible majority of drinkers may be asked to pay a few pennies for a bottle of cheap wine, but I believe many sensible people will support the proposals so as to tackle binge drinking among the young and the consequences we see in our streets, in our courts and in families.

Supermarkets like to think they are community minded, providing good service and excellent products that offer value for money and so they do, in the main, but their collective approach to very cheap alcohol is devastating lives and communities. It is time they recognised their responsibilities. It was not long ago we had justification for sales of tobacco products which clearly harmed health. Smoking is now becoming anti-social; it is time we treated drunkenness in the same way, and the place to start is introducing new laws based on minimum pricing per unit for all alcohol sales.