Alcohol education not taxation
You couldn't make it up: a member of the committee set up in 1987 by the Royal College of Surgeons to recommend safe drinking limits said the figures they put forward had "no scientifi c basis".
Dr Richard Smith added that the famous limits of 21 units a week for men and 14 for women "were plucked out of the air". And these people are surgeons!
Would you trust them to operate on you? "Sorry, Mr Plumley, I know you came in to have a wart on your nose removed but I'm afraid we took off your right foot.
But don't worry - we do a nice line in surgical boots." For 20 years now we have all existed under the shadow of the dreaded units. Think of the angst when we tot up how much we have consumed in a week and realise we are way over the limits imposed by the surgeons. And now the doctors are at it again. A new Alcohol Health Alliance, headed by the Royal College of Physicians, has been set up to lobby MPs with a demand to drastically increase the tax on drink. The aim is to stop us consuming too much and curb binge drinking in particular.
The other members of the alliance include the British Liver Trust, the Health Research Unit and... wait for it... Alcohol Concern. The last named body is the bunch of crackpots who, earlier this year, said people should tell the police if they see parents giving children alcohol in the privacy of their homes.
The derision heaped on the collective head of Alcohol Concern would, you might think, encourage them to keep quiet for a millennia or two. But no brain, no pain, I suppose. The alliance, with all the arrogance one comes to expect of surgeons and physicians, has ignored the important initiatives announced this year by the likes of the BII (British Institute of Innkeepers) and brewers Shepherd Neame to take part in a school education programme. The aim is the sensible one of telling young people about the pleasures and the pitfalls of alcohol.
That is what is missing from the attitude of the new Alcohol Health Alliance. They view drink purely as a problem. They are either unaware of or ignore the evidence that alcohol consumed in moderation is not only pleasant but also mildly benefi cial. The British are well down the world league tables for alcohol consumption and drinkrelated problems. The people now calling for a hike in duty to make drink less affordable ignore the facts and allow themselves to be bullied by sections of the media obsessed with binge drinking.
Binge drinking is a problem. But it involves only a tiny minority. We once again face the problem of sweeping reform aimed at the activities of a minority but which will impact on all of us who handle alcohol sensibly and moderately.
Education, not taxation, is the answer. All the evidence, ignored by the busybodies, shows that taxation is not a cure. In Sweden, where drink is taxed to the hilt, people save up for a month then go on blinders in Stockholm and other major towns and cities. In other words, higher duties on alcohol cause binge drinking of a liver-destroying kind. Evidence from all over the world shows that the more you restrict the supply of alcohol the greater are the problems created. The most extreme example is Prohibition introduced in the United States in the 1930s. It didn't stop drinking. Bootlegging became a major industry and the manufacture and supply of alcohol passed into the hands of gangsters. It also, in passing, wiped out most of the smaller independent brewers and distillers in the US, creating giant monopolies.
If mainstream drink becomes more expensive, people on low incomes will switch to cheaper and more dangerous forms of alcohol. And pubs, which exercise moderation, will lose out to supermarkets that will continue to sell beer at around 30p a pint. There is a growing drink problem in Britain. It is the supermarkets selling beer below the costs of production. The new Health Alliance and the Government should be tackling the power of the multiples instead of threatening the pleasure of the sensible majority.
