To worry about the poor alcoholics in Scotland

[jnfrrss]

the cheap ciders in 3l bottles have gone up three fold in price overnight with nothing done to actually help people that are dependent.

Surely this is going to cause a lot of pain in the immediate future? Seems very irresponsible to just do this in isolation without having some way to help people

It's hardly a surprise, this was being proposed and spoken about when I was a teenager, am sure.

We drink more than ever imho. My parents only drank at nights nights out, weddings etc and maybe had wine with sunday dinner. Dh and I drink at least 3x per week. It's so easy to buy alcohol with the weekly shop. So much more needs to be done but this could be a first step.

Detoxing from alcohol is absolutely brutal. I'm not sure hospitals will be able to cope.

I think minimum pricing is a great idea

Is an acaholic someone with an addiction to studying?

Truth is it’s unlikely to help anyone struggling with alcoholism who drinks alcohol which is this cheap. I imagine that people who have bought frosty jacks and similar will now opt for spirits to get more bang for their buck so to speak.
There will probably be an increase in shoplifting of spirits as well for those struggling to afford it.
It also raises the spectre of a black market in spirits which may contain more methanol than ethanol which is obviously a significant health problem.
Middle class drinkers who regularly drink £10 bottles of wine or have premium spirits will carry on regardless.
Younger drinkers may be discouraged to experiment with strong ciders but again they may (more than likely will) opt for spirits instead for the same reasons mentioned above.
If people are determined to drink- and as a nation a lot of Scots are - this maybe harder to tackle than minimum unit pricing.

But minimum unit pricing is a start, and it needs to start somewhere.

I didn't say totally against MP but just the way it was done overnight. Agree there's going to be much more shoplifting and crime because of this.

@TheIcon don't be a knob, the OP has dyslexia.

There will be 'booze runs' into England lol!

I was a smoker when the ban was being seriously discussed and it did make me do that extra attempt to quit, which I did. This is going to encourage me to buy less alcohol but serious drinkers will be unlikely to change, not straight away. The sunset clause is a good idea.

I just hope England follows suit.

And why yanbu op. About the speed of it.

icon

My dad was an alcoholic, it eventually killed him. I guarantee he'd have still found the money for booze and done without something else. I went home once (live overseas) and he was so far behind on the rent he was about to be evicted, was on a last red letter from the electric, and the only food in the house was half a loaf and a piece of cheese. It cost me a fortune to sort everything out, and fill the cupboards. The bin was full of those cheap cider bottles though.

It's not a tax. If a bottle of cheap cider was £4 yesterday and £10 today, the extra £6 is not going to the government, whether in Edinburgh or London. It's going to the retailer.

The minimum price is 50p per unit of alcohol. The OP is absolutely correct in stating that it will affect some drinkers more than. The minimum price of a bottle of wine will be £4.50. You'd be hard pressed to find a bottle of wine for £4.50 in the supermarket anyway, so buying a bottle a week for £7 or £8 you'll see no difference. Neither will the people who buy premium branded vodka, malt whisky, artisan gin or other spirits.

The drinks which are most affected are the cheap, own-brand spirits like vodka, "white lightning" style ciders which were less than a fiver for a huge bottle, and super strength, super cheap beer.

Alcohol abuse is a huge issue in Scotland, and I think the figures show we're doing worse than the rest of the UK. I'm not convinced this is the right way to tackle it - it would have been MUCH better if the excess money raised could have been diverted into rehabilitation and education. We'll have to see how it all pans out.

Prohibition didn't show consumption going down. Addicts will keep drinking, meths if necessary. This is punitive and not helpful

As someone who lives in Scotland and who's father is an alcoholic, I think minimum pricing is a good idea, a start.

Alcoholism starts with a single drink. So if we can reduce the amount of drinking, by non alcoholics the hope is that binge drinking which costs the NHS millions each year will reduce.

This will hopefully allow the NHS to treat those more in need.

Drinking is a choice which can become an addiction. While the addiction is a medical issues, drinking especially binge drinking and underage drinking which are common in Scotland aren't.

Unfortunately there will always be someone who priorities alcohol over anything else, same could be said for cigarettes. Only time will tell if it is successful.

Fuck - £11 for frosty jacks!?

It can be dangerous to detox from booze as an alcoholic. A homeless person with a tiny begging income won't be able to deal with this

White cider is evil, really evil stuff. I've seen people in their 40's with brain damage due to drinking it. I mean, all drinking is bad but the price of white cider means that a massive amount of units can be drunk per day.

If white cider is now so expensive, maybe the alcoholics will buy something weaker and cheaper. And less people in the future will become hooked on super cheap brain rotting stuff.

I'm on the fence about this. It does seem to disproportionately affect those on a lower income and do nothing to tackle middle class problem drinking.

trixy that's my issue really. Is it just piling more misery on vulnerable people and their families? I fear it is.

People have got used to very cheap alcohol, and coupled with a hard drinking culture, this has been a disaster. I went to an interesting talk by a liver consultant who said all his patients, without fail, who have liver disease drink spirits as they are very cheap. £10 is not an ok price for a bottle of vodka and students and younger people who are currently drinking a bottle before going out might think twice.

I can see that for those with high drinking levels, this could be costly- there is a lot of support although they may not access it.

It is nowhere near prohibition. In a legal marketplace, people still set prices. You wouldn't legalize heroin and make it super-cheap, would you, unless you wanted a nation of heroin addicts? Pricing is a mechanism for controlling consumption.

It would obviously have been better if the MPU was across the whole of the UK to stop people going over the border to get cheaper alcohol, but the Tory gov't were against it even though initially they agreed and all the public health people also agreed with it. That's the power of the alcohol industry.

This is the latest in a line of measures. We no longer have bulk discount - eg, two bottles of wine for a tenner, or 10% off when you but six, Lind you go in England. We also have much stricter drink drive laws. As a “middle class drinker”, my alcohol consumption has fallen massively since the DD change. I now no longer drink anything if I’m driving later or the next morning.

Alcoholism is a blight on our society. I applaud any measures that will reduce it in future generations.

“Like you’ve got in England” that should have said.