UK - Cost of cheap alcohol

[edgarshade]

Telegraph

9:45PM GMT 13 Dec 2011

With reader comments

Ban cut-price supermarket drinks to save live(sic)

SIR – Today, MPs debate the crucial issue of alcohol taxation. Each year, alcohol causes the admission of over a million people to hospital, is linked to 13,000 new cases of cancer and is associated with one in four deaths among young people aged 15 to 24.

There is a wealth of evidence to show a direct correlation between alcohol affordability and levels of harm. The House of Commons Health Select Committee state: “increasing the price of alcohol is… the most powerful tool at the disposal of a government.” In 2010, alcohol was 44 per cent more affordable than it was in 1980, a trend mirrored by an increase in cases of alcohol-related health problems and social damage.

We urgently need to raise the price of cheap drink. Harmful drinkers and young people are likely to be the most responsive to price increases. In particular, we need to narrow the price gap between alcohol in bars and restaurants with alcohol in supermarkets and off-licences, to make bulk discounts and pocket-money prices a thing of the past.

More...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/8954825/Cost-of-cheap-alcohol.html

Related article...
Ban cut-price alcohol to save lives, leading doctors warn

Alcoholic drinks sold at “pocket-money prices” in supermarkets are costing thousands of lives and must be made more expensive, a group of leading doctors and academics warns today. In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, medical experts urge the Government to take “bold action” and follow the lead of Scotland by bringing in minimum prices for drinks. They say current policies are not going far enough to prevent thousands of deaths from alcohol-related diseases every year.

More...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...cohol-to-save-lives-leading-doctors-warn.html

 

[!_MDMA_!]

shitty alcohol = more negative side affects i thought that was obvious

not fair to ban cheap alcohol while doing nothing about the high prices of quality alcohol

people are gonna drink if they want to i thought we learned that during the depression

 

[highhooked]

Yea. Good idea, do it.

 

[mgrady3]

this just seems like it would create a black market for cheap booze; lead to more deaths from people trying to drink isopropyl alcohol, methanol, alcohol containing substances like mouthwash or flavoring tinctures (vanilla, mint extracts...); an increase in theft related to higher priced alcohol, etc...

none of that is good.

I understand how it seems like a good idea - higher prices mean ess people drink which means less people die... but I'm not sure its quite that simple.