Hmmm
I can see the sense in this. And, face it: it's only going to make a noticeable difference to cheap chav-juice: a pint of stella is already well above 50p a unit, as is a can of the stuff. The same goes for a tolerable wine.

The idea that people would be wronged by having to pay more strikes me as absurd - not least because the minimum price would (in principle) go some way to correcting market failure, inasmuch as people at present do not pay the full cost of most things that they do: the social costs are unseen. A minimum price simply represents an attempt to privatise a public cost, and that seems perfectly just. (Look at the expected figures published yesterday.)

Of course, there might be objections that the policy'd be regressive - but since a unit of alcohol has the same social cost regardless of who consumes it, I'm not sure that that's all that powerful an objection.

NOW - none of this alters the claim that there also needs to be education and a general cultural change in respect of alcohol. That claim may be true. But there's no need to think that you can have one or the other - a bit of both might well be in order.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 17 Mar 2009, 9:53, Reply)