Scotland hikes cost of booze

[TerfinUSA]

50p/unit (10ml of alcohol) minimum, effective today, but they can easily increase the 50p rate at any time

The current UK alcohol duty rates are (before the cost of the product and VAT):

Low alcohol beer (not exceeding 2.8%) - 8.4p/unit
Beer - 19.1p/unit
Strong beer (above 7.5%) 24.8p/unit

Still cider of 7.5% alcohol 5.4p/unit
Still cider of 8.5% alcohol 7.2p/unit
Sparkling cider of 5.5% alcohol 7.3p/unit
Sparkling cider of 8.5% alcohol 32.9p/unit

Spirits 28.7p/unit

Wine of 13.5% alcohol 21.3p/unit
Sparkling wine of 11% alcohol 33.6p/unit

Basically the main outcome of this is to withdraw the big plastic bottles of cider from sale, as the price increases from £3.69/3 litres to £11.25/3 litres. Cider has historically had lower taxes to support UK apple growers.

Many cheap mass-produced beers will increase in price, as the minimum price is £2/litre for 4% beer, so 18 cans of Carling would cost at least £15.84 (currently £12, or £10 on special offer). 'Value beer', costing £1 for 4 * 440ml 2% ABV cans will go up to £1.76.

The cheapest wine allowed will be around £4.50/bottle.

A 40% ABV 1l bottle of spirits costs a minimum of £20.

This is obviously a HUGE increase (3x increase compared to 3l white cider)) in the cost of getting drunk for alcohol-dependent people, so not sure if there will be a black market in cider from England

Also interestingly, it is not a tax. The supermarkets reap the profit.

I am on the fence about this.

The people that this policy targets are alcoholics. Nobody but an alcohol dependent person is buying these multiple litre bottles of hard cider. When you're an alcoholic, you will do whatever it takes to get the adequate number of units into your body each day, or you'll be in withdrawal, which is dangerous as well as unbearably painful. So I don't actually think this will help anyone: alcoholics will find the money a different way, whether that's crime, sex work, shoplifting, whatever. It's almost definitely not going to be the factor that makes someone decide to address their addiction.

Maybe there'll be a black market for affordable alcohol? Or maybe a rise in people doing dangerous home brewing of hooch and the like.

On the other hand... I will keep an open mind as to what impact this has on alcohol problems in England. Maybe it will influence people in the middle who do drink too much, encouraging them back towards a more safer pattern of drinking. But at the expense of those who are deep into their addiction.

I suspect on balance it'll be a good thing for the majority while badly harming\penalising people with serious alcohol addictions, making life more difficult for them in a number of ways.

I can't help but think the money it took to devise and implement this could have been better used by setting up and properly funding good high quality evidence based addiction treatment and harm reduction measures. I'll be keeping an eye out to see how it goes.

Apparently the off-licences and supermarkets just over the border are getting ready for the equivalent of the booze cruise.