A flagship SNP health policy failed to curb problem drinking but forced alcoholics to go without food, a major study has found.
Scotland became the first country in the world to introduce minimum unit pricing (MUP) for alcohol in May 2018, currently fixed at 50p per unit.
But in a landmark report on the effectiveness of the policy, researchers from Sheffield and Newcastle universities found “no clear evidence” it dissuaded alcoholics from drinking.
In some cases, heavy drinkers spent up to 29 per cent less on food, utility bills and other items, according to data collected from 100,000 participants.
We could – and some did – predict this from the start using really very basic economic principles……
But booze is a food. It has calories. Maybe not good for a varied diet, but it’s still food.
So I wonder if they’ll scrap the whole thing or increase the MUP…?
Left wing government has an idea.
Knowledgeable people tell them that it won’t work and explain why.
Left wing government does it anyway.
It doesn’t work for the reason that the knowledgeable people gave.
Left wing government concludes either that they didn’t do it enough or that they need to take action against the problem that they caused by doing the thing in the first place.
Rinse and repeat.
There is also all the “off-book” consumption.
Home brew shops in every town seem to be doing OK.
Amazon & t’other internet sellers seem to be sold out of a lot of beer/ wine kits.
Then theres the make your own mash enthusiasts.
There’s the entirely coincidental fact that in the week of MUP being introduced in Scottisch Natziland, Majestic opened a new warehouse/emporium in Berwick upon Tweed.
Finally there are all the white vans doing a brisktrade between Carlisle supermarkets & the SW / Glasgow.
Anyone thinking that these nutters have an accurate figure for consumption of high priced alcohol when there are multiple ways of obtaining lower priced booze needs to be sold a bridge.
Already known. It is why boozers and gamblers – and their families – have so much financial difficulty, the money they have is spent primarily on their habit, any left over – if any – spent on food, rent, etc.
Homebrew made incompetently or dodgily can be a really serious public health issue – you don’t really want large numbers of heavy drinkers relying on it for their alcohol fix, if the point of your policy is supposedly health first and foremost. (And tbf the MUP is a weird policy where the financial benefits go to the alcohol makers and sellers, not to the government, so one has to presume it’s genuinely intended as a health measure not a stealth tax.) Unintended consequences matter too.
The major bonus effect for MUP would be the amount of tax collected.
SBML
“But booze is a food. It has calories.”
True, but – and this is me opining without peer reviewed research – ethanol doesn’t seem to be very bio-available. The reason why your beer drunk is fat (plenty of other calories besides ethanol), your wine drunk is full bodied and your vodka drunk is a skinny rake.
Coal is also very high in calories, but you will lose weight fast if you make it the main constituent of your diet.
Reminds me of the wicked policy, instituted by Tony Abbott I believe, that the dosh handed out to the abos should be on credit cards that could only be used to buy food, pay the rent etc. Not, for example, to buy booze.
Of course now that good old Albo is in power, I understand that this evil approach will be abolished and they’ll get it in cash. To be fair, that’s exactly the way I’d want to get it if I was in their place.
Meanwhile, the latest whinge in the news is that abo women are bashed and raped by their menfolk. And of course it’s all our fault, say the do-gooders.
Naturally it was the do-gooders who abolished all the restrictions and controls on the abos in the first place. Though again to be fair, I’d have to concede that I fully support their right to be citizens and equal with the rest of us. But of course I don’t support the push to have them given a special house in Parliament, and to be deemed to be our superiors.
Here I naturally disagree with the High Court’s Mabo decision, which deemed that the abos had title to the whole of Oz, except for that actually in the hands of the rest of us. They knew they’d never get away with swiping it all. Besides they’d lose their property too.
There used to be a railway viaduct across the Solway Firth. On Sundays when boozing was more restricted in Scotland than England men would walk south for a pint or ten. On the way back some would plunge to their deaths, by drowning in water or mud depending on the state of the tide. That was, at least according to folklore, one of thereasons for its demolition.
Put otherwise: booze is addictive to some boozers so of course Carlisle and Berwick will do a roaring trade – what the Natz hadn’t yet twigged was that for their plans to work they needed Moar Fascism.
Except that since MUP is not a tax, just a minimum price, the differential goes to some combination of the producer / wholesaler / retailer, not the Scottish Government.
@BiC, Stonyground
Because it’s not worked, Sturgeon has already proposed an additional 50% increase on MUP’s on top of the original 150% increase on free price
2 Litres cheap 5% alc drink
£2.00 pre MUP
£5.00 after MUP 1
£7.50 after MUP 2
Tax?
Gov’t gains 20% of price through VAT
No MUP = £0.40 VAT
MUP 1 = £1.00 VAT
Nice idea @Pcar but doesn’t work because the UK and Scottish Government haven’t come to agreement on VAT assignment, therefore all of the VAT arising from Scottish trade goes to the UK Government in Westminster rather than the toytown government at Holyrood.
VAT assignment: paused for now, but will it be pulled for good?
@JG
It’s passed back in other ways: funding, grants for xyz
Treasury still trying to find what Sturgeon did with ~£1 Billion of lockdown funding to support businesses. Seems to have vanished
A clue where it went: Ferguson marine, Edinburgh trams, more public sector non-jobs