• DPMC Moderators: thegreenhand | tryptakid
  • Drug Policy & Media Coverage Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Drug Busts Megathread Video Megathread

UK - How Wales' drinking culture costs every house £900 a year

E

edgarshade

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 31, 2010
Messages
1,954
Wales Online

By Julia McWatt
2 Dec 2013 06:45

A shift in focus is needed to deal with the country's costly alcohol culture, say experts.

Wales’ drinking culture costs the public purse £900 for every household, according to a leading public health expert. Professor Mark Bellis, Public Health Wales’ director of policy and research, said that the impact of drinking, including costs to the NHS, the criminal justice system and loss of productivity in the workplace, added up to around £900 for every household. He said that there needed to be a crack down on bars that served people who were already drunk and that, although he advocated putting in measures to make sure people were safe in drinking hotspots, there needs to be a change of focus to prevent people becoming too intoxicated in the first place.

He said: “We have an acceptance that it’s alright to get drunk and then keep on drinking. It’s actually against the law to serve people who are drunk but there have been very few prosecutions for this. The problem is that city centres become a place that people go out just to drink, when actually city centres belong to everybody."
Click to expand...

More...
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/how-wales-drinking-culture-costs-6359518
 
If people's lifestyle cost the state money then obviously the state would want to mandate people's lifestyle. That's the downside of socialism.
 
!_MDMA_! said:
You're looking at socialism through your capitalist lenses
Click to expand...

Well do you not understand my point? I believe there are many downsides to both systems and was simply pointing out a downside of socialism related to drug abuse. Society doesn't want the pick up the tab for their fellow man if they feel like he did it to himself.

I can talk about the downsides of capitalism for drug abusers quite easily. You have court-mandated rehabs with 3 percent effectiveness, you have a failed probationary system that traps people in the US, you have a pharmaceutical industry that could get IV heroin approved for 3 year olds if there was enough money in it, and you got a private prison industry and police unions that thrive off oppressing the good, the bad, and the ugly in all situations. I'm not pro-capitalist...but I'm definitely not a socialist either.
 
Out of "costs to the NHS, the criminal justice system and loss of productivity in the workplace" only the NHS is a product of socialist policy.

If this calculation is correct then I guess that £900 is a lot more than the average amount of tax collected on alcohol sales per head meaning that the alcohol trade is a net loss to Wales. Also no amount of tax is going to compensate the loss to workplaces, who only pay taxes and don't receive any.

In my days of Es,As and raving I only ever missed one single day at work. And that was due to alcohol!
 
weekend addiction said:
Well do you not understand my point? I believe there are many downsides to both systems and was simply pointing out a downside of socialism related to drug abuse. Society doesn't want the pick up the tab for their fellow man if they feel like he did it to himself.

I can talk about the downsides of capitalism for drug abusers quite easily. You have court-mandated rehabs with 3 percent effectiveness, you have a failed probationary system that traps people in the US, you have a pharmaceutical industry that could get IV heroin approved for 3 year olds if there was enough money in it, and you got a private prison industry and police unions that thrive off oppressing the good, the bad, and the ugly in all situations. I'm not pro-capitalist...but I'm definitely not a socialist either.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna go a little broader in order to adequately reply to your post. I believe the only drawback of socialism is the current state of man. I say current because I can't comment on whether it's always been this way or has been manipulated and distorted over time by the lifestyle capitalism tells us we're supposed to live. By the current state of man I am referring to the selfish, greedy, and power hungry society we live in. People aren't inherently motivated anymore, most of them only live and work for some kind of external reward at the end of the tunnel, which is typically money. Socialism is a utopia that won't be achieved because of this present plague on society. If socialism were to be implemented tomorrow it would fail instantly because of the hordes of people who wouldn't feel compelled to do anything because the carrot isn't infront of them and the man with the stick behind them is gone.

Socialism is supposed to foster the inherent talents within us, so that people inherently motivated to better themselves and this motivation will subsequently improve the society we live in. People would not have to worry about things like job security because essentially they work for themselves. Unfortunately I can't see this happening anytime soon because capitalism has taught us to work jobs that we don't care for simply because they pay the bills. If the fear of bills was eliminated, I fear too many people would spend all day doing nothing productive like get high and waste away their potential.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top