Minimum pricing meant I stopped buying locally and went to Amazon or increasingly to Spain for booze. In order to justify the effort of an online Spanish order and reduce shipping cost, it means making big orders. With more booze sitting about the house, do I drink more - its hard to say, not much but probably yes. I always have some to hand, its not as if I will finish a bottle and think, -right that's it until I go shopping on Saturday.
Ironically, since Brexit, booze from Spain has become cheaper. The Spaniards refund Spanish VAT, and UK customs don't bother to charge any duty or VAT, so long as you keep the order below approx £100. Three out of four deliveries don't get checked, one in four gets inspected, delayed a fortnight, but still delivered without charge.
And yes I barely go to pubs any more. The smoking ban, the covid nonsense of masks when you stand up, one way systems to go to the bog etc, general nanny statism, put me and it seems other off. Reduced footfall equals higher prices and a spiral of cutting back social drinking, but more spare cash for buying nicer stuff at home (not bought locally).
All MUP has done is impoverish alcoholics. Aren't there people in alcohol policymaking who want to actually help people suffering from a devastating disease, rather than just protect progressive shibboleths?
You are correct. Tax hikes work much better than MUP. The former increases prices across the board, while the latter only does at the lower end. The marginal cost of "trading up" to stronger stuff actually goes down with MUP. And there is apparently a point of diminishing returns to the public health benefits of increasing prices. Taxes were already fairly high in the UK and selling below cost was already illegal.
And in other news, lowering the BAC limit from 0.08 to 0.05 in Scotland some years ago did NOT result in fewer traffic casualties in Scotland relative to England, who did not lower it. It's almost like the low-hanging fruit of policy has already been picked, the shark has been jumped long ago, and the point of diminishing returns has already been reached.
Most studies, mostly in the USA where alcohol is cheaper than the UK and every European country bar Luxembourg, have found that higher prices (or taxes) on alcohol are associated with fewer alcohol-related problems and deaths. However, that doesn't seem to apply in this particular case for some reason. Perhaps the correlation is only true up to a point, and after that the correlation falls apart? As I understand it, prices were already fairly high to begin with in Scotland (and the UK in general) before MUP, perhaps they were already at the point of diminishing returns?
The USA (my country), on the other hand, would probably do well to raise the alcohol taxes a bit IMHO. America is really drowning in cheap booze it seems, and paying a heavy price for it. That was true even before the pandemic, but the lockdowns were truly gasoline on the fire.
And our illiberal 21 drinking age, the utter laughingstock of the world, really hasn't helped one iota it seems.
Minimum pricing meant I stopped buying locally and went to Amazon or increasingly to Spain for booze. In order to justify the effort of an online Spanish order and reduce shipping cost, it means making big orders. With more booze sitting about the house, do I drink more - its hard to say, not much but probably yes. I always have some to hand, its not as if I will finish a bottle and think, -right that's it until I go shopping on Saturday.
Ironically, since Brexit, booze from Spain has become cheaper. The Spaniards refund Spanish VAT, and UK customs don't bother to charge any duty or VAT, so long as you keep the order below approx £100. Three out of four deliveries don't get checked, one in four gets inspected, delayed a fortnight, but still delivered without charge.
And yes I barely go to pubs any more. The smoking ban, the covid nonsense of masks when you stand up, one way systems to go to the bog etc, general nanny statism, put me and it seems other off. Reduced footfall equals higher prices and a spiral of cutting back social drinking, but more spare cash for buying nicer stuff at home (not bought locally).
Nice one! Neoliberalism always wins.
All MUP has done is impoverish alcoholics. Aren't there people in alcohol policymaking who want to actually help people suffering from a devastating disease, rather than just protect progressive shibboleths?
You are correct. Tax hikes work much better than MUP. The former increases prices across the board, while the latter only does at the lower end. The marginal cost of "trading up" to stronger stuff actually goes down with MUP. And there is apparently a point of diminishing returns to the public health benefits of increasing prices. Taxes were already fairly high in the UK and selling below cost was already illegal.
And in other news, lowering the BAC limit from 0.08 to 0.05 in Scotland some years ago did NOT result in fewer traffic casualties in Scotland relative to England, who did not lower it. It's almost like the low-hanging fruit of policy has already been picked, the shark has been jumped long ago, and the point of diminishing returns has already been reached.
Most studies, mostly in the USA where alcohol is cheaper than the UK and every European country bar Luxembourg, have found that higher prices (or taxes) on alcohol are associated with fewer alcohol-related problems and deaths. However, that doesn't seem to apply in this particular case for some reason. Perhaps the correlation is only true up to a point, and after that the correlation falls apart? As I understand it, prices were already fairly high to begin with in Scotland (and the UK in general) before MUP, perhaps they were already at the point of diminishing returns?
The USA (my country), on the other hand, would probably do well to raise the alcohol taxes a bit IMHO. America is really drowning in cheap booze it seems, and paying a heavy price for it. That was true even before the pandemic, but the lockdowns were truly gasoline on the fire.
And our illiberal 21 drinking age, the utter laughingstock of the world, really hasn't helped one iota it seems.