It's Not Often a Rise in Tax Is Proposed On These Pages, but As the Government Considers Minimum Pricing for Alcohol, Isn't There a Simpler Solution to the Binge Drinking Culture? [Scot Region]

Summary

---

As a nation, the British have always enjoyed a drink. But for anyone who has seen the horrifying levels of drunkenness in our town centres on a saturday night, it is clear that the temptations of cheap and available alcohol have once again become a desperate problem.

Binge-drinking and cheap alcohol are anything but a new social disease. Yet it would seem we have heeded few of the dire warnings of the 18th Century satirist William Hogarth, who made a distinction between the happy citizens enjoying a 'good' beer and the degenerates brought down by cheap gin.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

It's Not Often a Rise in Tax Is Proposed On These Pages, but As the Government Considers Minimum Pricing for Alcohol, Isn't There a Simpler Solution to the Binge Drinking Culture? [Scot Region]

The result of his pictorial warnings was dramatic and effective: the 1751 Gin Act which increased tax and almost immediately reduced alcoholism.

So why, if governments have such a simple solution at their fingertips, might you ask, are there more than a million alcoholics in the UK today? Why are there a staggering 7.5 million peop...

See the full content of this document

---