Trade Talk: Steve Perez
Steve Perez, founder and managing director of drinks company Global Brands Limited, on binge-drinking.
Tim Martin said: "If sex was invented in the 1960s then binge-drinking was invented in the 1990s".
I remember in the 1970s when I was at college, going out with my mates, drinking underage and being sick in the toilet all night.
My Spanish father woke me up at 7am next day and said "now you are a man, you can come for a day with the men". He put a large smoking cigar in my mouth and took me to the races with his friends.
Needless to say that day I did not touch a drop of the alcohol offered to me, I can't remember ever being drunk again and to this day I hate smoking.
In the industrial area of Derbyshire where I am from, it was quite acceptable for miners to go and drink eight pints a night, every night. The colloquial language for being drunk was "one over the eight".
Since then the mines have closed along with many of the pubs and workingmen's clubs and there has been a proliferation of new bars in town centres. Now people go out mainly on a Friday and Saturday night and a minority drink too much because of the drinking time limit imposed on them.
Then little was said in the press about excessive drinking; more coverage actually focused on drink-driving.
In the 90s the big issue was drugs, particularly Ecstasy. Alcohol went out of fashion; sales dropped dramatically and bottled water sales went through the roof, which was one of the contributory factors of my own Global Beer Company going bust. The Tories brought in new regulations which would close clubs down if they were suspected of allowing use and sale drugs on their premises.
Fortunately in 2000 alcohol came back in, water sales fell and many young people began drinking RTDs or "alcopops", as the press like to call them. These products are controlled, labelled and safe when used in moderation, unlike the products bought in the toilets in a paper wrap for a fiver.
The French and the Germans singled out RTDs as the route of all bingeing and have imposed "super taxes" on RTDs on "health grounds". I suspect their own powerful wine and beer lobbies are behind this, as most of the RTDs are imported from the UK. It's strange that in the UK, where binge-drinking is said to be on the increase, sales of RTDs are in decline. By increasing tax on one type of alcohol people will just move to another type which is less highly taxed. Increasing tax on alcohol will penalise the vast majority of moderate drinkers and do little to stop the weekend bingers. The new licensing regulations will help change our drinking culture, but it will take a long time before we change to continental standards.
It would help if parents would act like their continental counterparts and allowed moderate controlled drinking at home. But leave out the cigars - they're disgusting!
Steve Perez is founder and managing director of drinks company Global Brands Limited, whose brands include Vodka Kick and Corky's Vodka Shots.
