I can appreciate that no-one knows whether 21 units per week (for men) is the correct boundary ... but it's a fact that as alcohol consumption has increased, so has cirrhosisof the liver.
People used to die in their fifties and sixties of it, now we are increasingly seeing people dying of it in their thirties.
I thought we needed another thread for this topic, so here it is.

There is considerable argument happening at the moment about whether a minimum price per alcoholic unit is the way to go.

Personally, I don't think it will deter the middle-class heavy drinker, as many of them will already be buying more up-market stuff and paying more than the minimum price anyway.

I see the issue being clouded because some people are talking about drunkenness in the clubs and streets ... and others are talking about alcoholism, which can be a solitary activity and is not necessarily the same thing.

What's to be done?
Anything?

And mental health ?

The valid argument FOR minimum pricing is that it favours Pubs and Clubs which are being hammered on a daily basis by low cost supermarket alcohol to the extent where its almost not viable to consider a pub as a business to get into.

As for preventing public drunken-ness I don't think it will have any effect at all unless the off-sales retail price of alcohol is massively prohibitive to the extent where its not affordable to anyone - which is obviously not what was being proposed.


I sort of touched on the issue of alcohol the other day and at the risk of sounding like an old fogey it might be of use to point out to those under 30s what used to be "the norm" when the likes of thee and me were under 30...

I was 18 in 1974, at that time pubs in Leeds generally closed during the afternoon, 7 days a week, opening around 4pm until 10.30pm, a blanket closing time, no exceptions, on a saturday night we'd go out around 8pm and drink for just two and a half hours then go home (or occasionally to a night club where you could drink until 2am).

Yes, we drank to get drunk and we were not angels, but we drank beer, and often it was mild or mixed beer and certainly not above 4%, it was very difficult to get yourself drunk to a point where you collapsed when drinking beer of that type, I've seen it done, but it was rare.

If we drank spirits at all it was a couple of shots of whisky at the end of the night, thats how spirits were sold, there was no such thing as pretty coloured spirits or the ethos of "shots", a measure of whisky or brandy was an old mans drink, frankly we wouldn't be seen dead drinking coloured spirits even if they'd been available.

As I said, we were not angels, there was still violence on the streets, there was still drunken-ness, I avoided drinking in Leeds city centre because of those problems, but the drinking culture was TOTALLY different to what it is now and it was very closely regulated which compared to the situation today is very definitely NOT the case.


I'm not an envagelist because I now cannot drink alcohol (apart from the occasional pint of ale which I cherish), but I do try and drive the point home with my own two young adults that, especially for females, drinking to excess is a very dangerous occupation - they ignore me of course.

A minimum pricing strategy won't stop someone becoming or persisting in being an alcoholic. Addicts are addicts, they'll find ways to satisfy their addiction no matter what barriers you put in their way.

Neither will it stop the middle class or celebrity set that you see stumbling out of nightclubs or high end bars off their faces.

It's targeted squarely at those on low incomes (benefits/tax credit claimants?) to prevent them from spending any of the money the state gives them on alcohol. It's another piece of ideology dressed up as being "for our own good".

I was thinking pretty much exactly the same thing. The different licensing hours are a big factor IMO. I went to Uni in 1977 to Aberystwyth and there were 52 pubs, one for every week of the year in a town with a population of 12,000 plus 4000 students. Back then the whole town was dry on Sunday's so never mind closing at 10:30pm if you wanted a beer on a Sunday you went to one of two student union bars that were open due to being classed as clubs. Not many people bothered.

My son is at the same University having gone this year. The contrast is quite staggering in terms of drinking behaviour. The student population is now 12,000 and the pubs seem to have adapted their business to the longer licensing hours. They know the students can't afford to sink pint after pint for hours so most are advertising shots. The students will load themselves up with alcohol before going out to save money which suggests a minimum price [imay[/i alter this behaviour but many of the pubs do deals on shots for a quid a go (or less) so its not just supermarket bought booze that is the issue.

Like you we were no angles and one pub, The Castle, brewed its own extremely dodgy very cloudy cider that was rocket fuel but there was no culture that meant we always drank loads of that. It was something to do to say you had done it and survived, not a regular tipple. As with yourself we drank beer and given the limited time it was on sale this limited your consumption.

So I don't know how we got to where we have because there seem two problems. The drinking culture that is shot-based with the aim of getting blatted asap and the effect the relaxed licensing laws seem to have had.

I have been in Aber staying overnight since my son went there and I am sure we were not out at 2am mid-week which saw plenty of evidence of. My son tells me people doing that are usually out on a "social" from a sports club or society. Different clubs and societies have them on different days of the week (obviously) so there is a constant late night scene going on. The fact they are still going at 2am is clearly a direct result of longer opening hours and in this town the pubs tapping the student market.

I know our EU friends have nearly always had long opening hours and don't seem to have the problem but IMO I think you are spot on to suggest the opening hours in the UK are part of the problem.

What is by far the biggest difference between the UK and our EU cousins is that culturally, groups of young people simply have to go out and get absolutely, positively wasted into near-oblivion, or else it isn't a night out.

It was by no means always so, and there's no reason it always needs to be so, but that's it at the moment, peer pressure, plain and simple, "if we're on a night out then we have to get shiitfaced".

Beacuse what supermarkets need is a boost to their profits...

It is flawed in Scotland and it is flawed down south.

Mind I did like Millibands line at PMQ's

May I join the procession of the, erm , elder community?

We drank beer too.
It wasn't as strong as, say, Stella is now and you usually got full before you got utterly blasted.
Sometimes (not always) we would be worse for wear by the end of the evening but never at the start of the evening because the whole point was to go out and enjoy the drinking.
Getting blasted as a preparation for a night out was never even considered.

Missed it, what was it?

"With the Uturn on minimum pricing on alcohol, just what can the PM do in a brewery?"

Even if that is the actual case, which is another debate, there are many, many doctors who see large numbers of the people you describe destroying their lives and those of their family by killing themselves on ultra cheap alcohol that they would have little or no access to if it was priced higher.
As someone said this morning, give it a try, if it doesn't work then drop the policy. There are pockets of the population who are simply being destroyed by cheap booze and perhaps pricing it beyond their reach in the first place might work. I haven't seen anyone even hint that this is a way of stiffing the poor again.
I'd also argue that with the financial stresses on the middle classes (one for the groups shown to be increasing in alcohol consumption), increasing the price will have an effect. Coming home from work can I really afford 10 quid a night on a bottle of wine? Maybe I can stretch to a fiver but at a certain price point you start to think, not tonight.
Again as someone said this morning, why can't supermarkets discount vegetables or household essentials instead of alcohol?

The minimum price for a bottle of wine at 12%abv would be under a fiver.

They're usually really lame in PMQs but that's not a bad one at all.

Couldn't organise a brew-up in a patisserie.

Another important factor but one which seems to pass the government by is that, just as in the case of fags, the higher the price of booze, the greater the profits for criminals to bootleg it. It is well known that the trade in counterfeit baccy and booze is worth many billions, and the more you put up the price, the more people will be driven into buying potentially very dodgy stuff, much of which the avergae punter wouldn't even readily know was dodgy - there are loads of off-licences etc who sell fake bottles of vodka and whisky and not all of them even know it, although I suspect many either do, or turn a blind eye to the provenance.

Maybe they could sell all spirits in plain bottles, like fags in brown paper. That would cut down on fake booze, wouldn't it?

We already have laws banning the serving to people who have already had too much and the offence of being drunk and disorderly ... do we need to enforce this better and make the penalties greater?

Neither have any effect of someone drinking a skin full of Ace "cider" at home every night.

Yes.
I took the educated decision to stop my 10 year homely stint of supping vast amounts of 2 litre bottles of White Lightning.
I believe my liver is in remission.

No, but could enforcement and penalties have an effect on public drukenness?

Are you druke EB?

Absolutely. Try ing in the gutter and giving a rozzer abuse in your average town in Poland and see how you go on. Or even Spain, even if the police in the main resorts do hold back a little bit in deference to the tourist dollar.

Are you druke EB?

I think that would certainly play a role. I rarely see anyone be denied service until they are well and truly plastered. But then the bars, pubs and clubs in city centres on a Friday night are often far too busy and packed full for the poorly paid bar staff to notice who is drunk and who's not.

As mentioned by the elderly

earlier on this thread a big part of the problem is the cheap spirits and alcopop type drinks. It takes a long time to get plastered on beer or lager simply because it takes a long time to drink that amount. With the spirits and alco pops that can be drunk as easily and quickly as lemonade you can down these drinks very quickly, without it seeming like you're drinking something strong, and then it catches up with you.

I'm not a drinker during the week but I love a good binge on a weekend. If I go to a party I quite like the idea that I can go and get my 20 cans from the Supermarket fairly cheaply. Why should I be forced to pay more? I'll tell you what, I could make my own and then they wouldn't be getting any tax from me.

Actually, I think you are one of the target markets that they are wanting to influence into drinking less.
I am not saying you are one of the ones who make a nuisance of themselves but the medics would say you are one of those who is harming themselves by bingeing.

Your contribution to this thread could be very useful in answering questions that have the older ones of us perplexed.

I'll kick off, if that's OK, ... do you think you are harming yourself by bingeing at weekends?

I'm one of those who would be hit in the pocket if minimum unit pricing came in. I enjoy my visits to the pub but if I drink at home I tend to drink Lidl's Graffenwalder. It's 4.8%,brewed to the Reinheitsgebot and costs 85p per 500ml can. If the 45p per unit was introduced, it would cost £1.08p. Now 23p is not a fortune but it would then be priced similarly to all the pi[is[/is lagers like: Carling, Carlsberg, Fosters etc

One thing that we should expect, now we've seen a row-back from minimum unit pricing, is an increase in excise duties way above inflation at next week's budget