Price of Alcohol

This is again in the news, with Tesco backing a halt to loss leading alcohol sales. They may even support a legal minimum price. Various informed and thinking contributors have been giving their views on the media. A major problem appears to be the fact that booze is now so widely available in supermarkets and corner shops at all times of the day and night. The days of the off licence, allowed by the authorities here and there but not everywhere, and pubs as the only place (apart from restaurants) where alcohol could be bought are gone. So are the restrictions of licencing hours. Both may need to be brought back.

Once chroninic binge drinking becomes part of the culture of a community, a country or a generation of the young, it is a diaster. This is not to say that drinking alcohol is bad, if at sensible levels. But it becomes bad if the purpose of drinking is to get drunk, the sooner and the more completely the better and even the more heroic. This is a cultural wrong turning and will need radical measures to get us back on track. Tinkering with the price will not work alone.

America tried total prohibition. That did not work. This blog believes that something between it and what we have now, would. A complete ban on the sale of alcohol in stores and supermarkets across the board whatever time of day or night. Re-opening pubs shut because of supermarket competition, so that people drink in the right place and the prohibition of drinking in public non-licenced open spaces and buildings. Return of off licences but not too many. Reintroduction of liberal licencing hours but an end to 24 hour availability. Slap on tax to make drinking an affordable luxury not a cheap thrill. Triple tax beers or wines with excessive alcohol content. Culturally outlaw boozing as a severe weakness of character and help those addicted.

In other words not unlike what we had before all the trouble began. Oh, something else. Get some life values and work practices that do not make people want to drown their sorrows at the end of every single day. Understand that boozing, bankers,  borrowing and bust, all come from the same dark cave.