Minimum Unit Pricing of Alcohol

[Pmax2020]

I wondered where you guys stood on this?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68238846.amp

Introduced in 2012 by the Scottish government, minimum unit pricing was aimed at reducing hospital related admittance and ultimately deaths resulting from excessive alcohol consumption. There compelling evidence that its worked.

Initially I was on the fence. I thought, why should I pay more when I only drink occasionally? 

In reality minimum pricing only impacted very cheap alcohol - and let’s be honest that’s the stuff most alcoholics target. 

Even with these increases, your budget brands in the supermarkets will barely rise in price. Own-brand supermarket Prosecco will still be £6.99 for the cheap stuff. A litre bottle of Jack Daniel’s that I occasionally buy for £25 will increase to £26.

 

Edited February 9 by Pmax2020

[TenYearToGetMyMoneyBack]

When first introduced I read a comment on the BBC Have Your Say about "Evil Nichola Sturgeon depriving Jock of his one little pleasure". To me the comment sounded really pathetic, implying that the one pleasure in life was getting blind drunk. 

[fellow]

Forcing a price increase without implementing a tax is a strange policy. Instead of raising the price in the normal way via taxation and using the extra revenue to help the NHS deal with alcohol related issues, they decided to gift extra profits to the big brands by forcing people to pay more and removing their cheaper competition.

[Stewy]

Don't care. I like craft beer which prices out the lout lager Stella Madri Moretti and Carling drinkers. 

Wetherspoons always has good CASK at around £2.5 so I'm happy.

Life is Cheap. 

[Breakingpoint]

15 hours ago, Pmax2020 said:

I wondered where you guys stood on this?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68238846.amp

Introduced in 2012 by the Scottish government, minimum unit pricing was aimed at reducing hospital related admittance and ultimately deaths resulting from excessive alcohol consumption. There compelling evidence that its worked.

Initially I was on the fence. I thought, why should I pay more when I only drink occasionally? 

In reality minimum pricing only impacted very cheap alcohol - and let’s be honest that’s the stuff most alcoholics target. 

Even with these increases, your budget brands in the supermarkets will barely rise in price. Own-brand supermarket Prosecco will still be £6.99 for the cheap stuff. A litre bottle of Jack Daniel’s that I occasionally buy for £25 will increase to £26.

 

Is the evidence really compelling? Alcohol deaths have gone up since MUP was brought in. They’ve gone down relative to where they hypothetically might have been if there was no MUP introduced. 

https://www.shaap.org.uk/alcohol-facts/alcohol-harms-in-scotland.html

[kzb]

3 hours ago, Breakingpoint said:

Is the evidence really compelling? Alcohol deaths have gone up since MUP was brought in. They’ve gone down relative to where they hypothetically might have been if there was no MUP introduced. 

https://www.shaap.org.uk/alcohol-facts/alcohol-harms-in-scotland.html

How can anyone know this ?

[Fishfinger]

6 hours ago, Stewy said:

Don't care. I like craft beer which prices out the lout lager Stella Madri Moretti and Carling drinkers. 

Wetherspoons always has good CASK at around £2.5 so I'm happy.

Life is Cheap. 

I can do better than that.

Cost of weed seed £5-£10, throw in the ground and watch it grow. No need to associate with unstable alcohol addicts in pubs.

Life is relaxed, creative and very cheap (apart from the 3 Mars bars I need when the munchies kick in😀)

[kzb]

18 hours ago, Pmax2020 said:

I wondered where you guys stood on this?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-68238846.amp

Introduced in 2012 by the Scottish government, minimum unit pricing was aimed at reducing hospital related admittance and ultimately deaths resulting from excessive alcohol consumption. There compelling evidence that its worked.

Initially I was on the fence. I thought, why should I pay more when I only drink occasionally? 

In reality minimum pricing only impacted very cheap alcohol - and let’s be honest that’s the stuff most alcoholics target. 

Even with these increases, your budget brands in the supermarkets will barely rise in price. Own-brand supermarket Prosecco will still be £6.99 for the cheap stuff. A litre bottle of Jack Daniel’s that I occasionally buy for £25 will increase to £26.

 

Well here in England we can buy booze reduced for stock damage, and in retailers like Home Bargains.

The other week I got a case of 10 Strongbow cider for £4.87 because it had something spilt on the box in Tesco (about 24p per unit).

Recently they were selling short-dated 440mL cans of 6.5% beer in Home Bargains for £1.09 (38p/unit).  It was some kind of French monastery beer as well, probably very expensive at full price.

Presumably I wouldn't be able to do this in Scotland, so no you can keep it thanks.

 

[fellow]

19 minutes ago, Fishfinger said:

I can do better than that.

Cost of weed seed £5-£10, throw in the ground and watch it grow. No need to associate with unstable alcohol addicts in pubs.

Life is relaxed, creative and very cheap (apart from the 3 Mars bars I need when the munchies kick in😀)

And that's exactly why they don't want to legalse is.

[regprentice]

19 minutes ago, kzb said:

Well here in England we can buy booze reduced for stock damage, and in retailers like Home Bargains.

 

A lot of online retailers wont discount alcohol in scotland or ship to scotland.

Supermarket deals dont exist here (3 x 12 Packs of carling  for £20 for example). I see these kinds of deals advertised online but can never get them up here. 

When MUP came in retailers didnt know what to do....my local co-op stopped selling 4/6/8 packs of beer and only sold loose single cans and bottles. That was a crappy customer experience. 

Amazon dont observe MUP, or at least they dont check their algorithm is observing MUP when it automatically cuts prices for sellers. I bought a case of 24 cans of 330ml 5% ale over xmas for £9ish 

Edited February 10 by regprentice

[kzb]

2 minutes ago, regprentice said:

A lot of online retailers wont discount alcohol in scotland or ship to scotland.

Supermarket deals dont exist here (3 x 12 Packs of carling  for £20 for example). I see these kinds of deals advertised online but can never get them up here. 

When MUP came in retailers didnt know what to do....my local co-op stopped selling 4/6/8 packs of beer and only sold loose single cans and bottles. That was a crappy customer experience. 

Amazon dont observe MUP, or at least they dont check their algorithm is observing MUP when it automatically cuts prices for sellers. I bought a case of 24 cans of 330ml 5% ale over xmas for £9ish 

In Asda and Morrisons,  several beers and ciders are on 3 x 10 cans for £23.  In Asda, get any two boxes of 4 craft beers (i.e. 8x330mL) for £10, and they range up to 7.5%.   There is some 5% lager in Aldi for £2.99 for 4x440mL.

The trouble with online sales is the delivery cost, because beer is pretty heavy.  It looks cheap, but when you add on delivery, it isn't.

If I were you I would be making trips over the border for bulk buying ! 

[AThirdWay]

I guess it depends what you drink and how much.

Even this proposed increase won't hit a bottle of Hennessey or Glenmorangie, so no real impact on me. The cheap vodka, gin, brandy etc. is going up a few quid but how much do you drink for that to have an impact? If you're battering through a bottle of rotgut a week then you need to knock it on the head, this is one way to encourage that.

I get the freewill argument but would counter with the impact alcohol abuse has on society as a whole. What percentage of offences are committed under the influence?

[Unmoderated]

I drink whisky. There's only one 'cheap' whisky I like which is Starward Leftfield. It's an Aussie one. Global whiskies are interesting and don't carry the preimum of Scotch, but Scotch is untouchable for the very good stuff. 

I digress. I think minimum pricing is sensible. Alcoholism is a disease and patients require help. Plenty of life and potential lost to it. We tax it already and I'd like to think that money goes to help. There's also no safe alcohol consumption level. It's toxic and the more you consume the greater your risk of alcohol related diseases, cancer etc. 

In reality the cheap crap will just fall away and MUP will just leave the higher value stuff. In response to others on the handing a gift to the suppliers point - I'mm not sure this logic stands up so well. Margins on lower quality stuff are still fairly tight and it's not like MUP will suddenly mean the price of everything goes up. There's still a lot of compeition.

The Swedish have an interesting model for this though. The state owns all the offlicences and bulk buys booze at good discounts to sell on. State dictates the price and takes the profit to use for public goods. Not a big fan of socialism but the Swedes seem to have a pretty sensible approach to most things in this regard. 

[A.steve]

I think it's an interesting pattern.

Make it illegal to compete on price... Short term consequences:

• Manufacturer competition shifts from price to quality.
• Retail prices receive a centrally mandated uplift - avoiding deflation.
• Cost of living rises - offsets pay-deals for the typical employee - avoids rampant inflation.

It's a bit like minimum wage... which restricts the minimum price a person can charge for their time when employed.

Medium term consequences:

• Transactions adapt... Low paid workers only paid for a narrow interpretation of hours worked - not including breaks and travel time - etc. less motive to provide benefits in kind as a floor under prices for labour anchors expectations around that floor and marginalises the ability of low-paid workers to create the narrative that they deliver substantially more value.   Minimum price alcohol could come with free-gifts... perhaps free crisps or nuts or glassware... or maybe free entry into a prize draw for a personal barmaid to come and pour your drinks?  Entwining gambling with alcohol would probably be an especially potent mix.
• Those whose are addicted have their budgets squeezed - this will undermine their quality of life and further entrench any addictive behaviour.  By analogy - entrepreneurial businesses require more capital to pay wages at start-up - transferring control from the entrepreneurs to capital investors... which probably isn't great if you think the active entrepreneurs will be more entrepreneurial than bankers.

 

[PeanutButter]

What is the cost of alcohol abuse to the NHS each year?

[kzb]

2 hours ago, AThirdWay said:

Even this proposed increase won't hit a bottle of Hennessey or Glenmorangie, so no real impact on me.

 

2 hours ago, Unmoderated said:

In reality the cheap crap will just fall away and MUP will just leave the higher value stuff.

In other words "I'm all right so stuff the poor".   

So the MUP will have no effect on the amount the better-off drink, but spoils the fun of the poor.  It's bad enough being poor already.  All it does is make them even poorer for no detectable benefit.

2 hours ago, Unmoderated said:

There's also no safe alcohol consumption level.

Do we have to start all that J-curve discussion again ?

[AThirdWay]

2 hours ago, kzb said:

So the MUP will have no effect on the amount the better-off drink, but spoils the fun of the poor.  It's bad enough being poor already.  All it does is make them even poorer for no detectable benefit

Yeah, take the class war chip off your shoulder, that is the whole point. 

Do you think the levels of alcohol abuse is greater in the "better-off" or greater in the "poor"?

[onlooker]

3 hours ago, AThirdWay said:

Yeah, take the class war chip off your shoulder, that is the whole point. 

Do you think the levels of alcohol abuse is greater in the "better-off" or greater in the "poor"?

Obviously in the better-off. The sort of people who can afford a bottle of wine (or two) every night, each.

Middle class alcoholics.

[AThirdWay]

2 hours ago, onlooker said:

Obviously in the better-off. The sort of people who can afford a bottle of wine (or two) every night, each.

Middle class alcoholics.

Yeah, that's the problem that the polis clean up off the streets every weekend. 😏

[Stewy]

13 hours ago, kzb said:

 

In other words "I'm all right so stuff the poor".   

 

Yep.

Chavvy scummy tattooed council-estaters cause the majority of the issues on booze, not the housewife on a bottle or two each evening or the £6/half craft partaker. 

The scum should be priced off it. 

[onlooker]

1 hour ago, Stewy said:

Yep.

Chavvy scummy tattooed council-estaters cause the majority of the issues on booze, not the housewife on a bottle or two each evening or the £6/half craft partaker. 

The scum should be priced off it. 

Maybe  different problems in different areas. I don’t see any scraped off the streets round here, but there is a huge drug problem, and that appears to be almost entirely unpoliced and uncontrolled.

[Stewy]

2 minutes ago, onlooker said:

Maybe  different problems in different areas. I don’t see any scraped off the streets round here, but there is a huge drug problem, and that appears to be almost entirely unpoliced and uncontrolled.

Back in the 90s the only place I ever remembers smelling weed was in N/4 Northern Quarter Manchester...now it's everywhere...

 

[fellow]

3 hours ago, Stewy said:

Yep.

Chavvy scummy tattooed council-estaters cause the majority of the issues on booze, not the housewife on a bottle or two each evening or the £6/half craft partaker. 

The scum should be priced off it. 

Then they just steal it or make their own. Prohibition doesn't work.

[kzb]

5 hours ago, Stewy said:

Yep.

Chavvy scummy tattooed council-estaters cause the majority of the issues on booze, not the housewife on a bottle or two each evening or the £6/half craft partaker. 

The scum should be priced off it. 

It'd just go black market if you attempted to do that.

Also the housewife on one or two bottles of wine a day (70 to 140 units a week) is doing more damage to herself than someone having a few cans on Saturday night.

[kzb]

2 hours ago, fellow said:

Then they just steal it or make their own. Prohibition doesn't work.

Exactly.

Things tend to have unexpected side effects.  Like the ID checks to keep under 18s out of bars.  What that succeeded in doing was more drinking in the streets and all the associated antisocial behaviour that entails.  Turns out teenagers are better off drinking in the presence of their elders.