Published on 12, July, 2020
Is it another tax on the poor? Or is it genuinely going to save lives? I am not sure. But the latest price hike on alcohol in Scotland comes at a time when many of us are struggling enough already as it is and this latest price hike of more than 30% for alcohol will not land favourably amongst many Scottish recreational alcohol users. Now following the price hike a standard bottle of gin will now cost £30 give or take. That is a small fortune for a bottle of gin. If we work it all out to get tipsy on the cheapest beer in a Scottish convenience store will now cost roughly £8. Nah that’s too expensive at least for me. Just to get tipsy not even drunk? Nah don’t think so. Because of Minimum unit pricing a pint from a bar in Scotland already costs roughly £5 that can now be expected to go up to £7. Is this a joke? Who can afford to pay £7 for a pint of beer? I mean it works okay for me because I was already looking for reasons to give up alcohol and now I think I have it. No way can I afford to drink after this 30% increase. No way! If the Scottish government wants to reduce people drinking this will surely work because this new law is going to make it really hard to get drunk on a budget. It seems a bit unfair to punish people who like to drink but at the same time I am aware that we have a massive issue with alcohol here in Scotland and the government has to do something to stop people destroying themselves. But what do you all think about this new price hike? Do you agree with it? Is it another tax on the poor to stop them enjoying themselves? Or is it a genuine heartfelt approach to stopping alcohol related harm?
Alcohol seems to be the only drug, one which harms thousands across the UK, to be legal and acceptable.
Yeh it’s strange I dunno why it’s legal I guess you could say that alcohol companies have campaigned and advertised for their drugs to be acceptable and an allowed way to get high. Really when you drink alcohol your getting high of a drug. That’s what it is but we invent different word for getting high off alcohol to words like ‘drunk’ so it puts alcohol in its own category where it’s not really seen as a drug even though it is a drug the same as LSD or cocaine etc.
Alcohol has been around for a very long time and humans as a species like getting off their faces on something or other, the consumption of mind altering substances seems to go back to the paleolithic. Europe has an alcohol culture as opposed to a tea culture, like China or Japan, although both those countries also have a long history of alcohol use too. Small beer, about the strength of supermarket shandy was the standard drink of centuries because water was often unfit to drink and the brewing process made it potable.
I think that if they were discovered today many of our everyday food and drinks would be illegal, coffee, chilli, chocolate to name but three, they all have effects on the brain.
One of the things thats long fascinated me is why some cultures, like ours, can't seem to control it's alcohol consumption without legislation? I guess it's related to other addictions, but I don't believe in "addicitve personalities", I don't believe that some people have a need to become addicted to substances and actions, I think they have some unresolved issues and I don't say this to undermine anyone, but to try and think outside the box a bit. I don't believe it's to do with any moral weakness either.
I think we do need a proper grown up conversation about substances and addiction, but this seems to br something politicians shy away from, to afraid of being though "soft" and too afraid of powerful lobby's. Anyone remmber David Nuttall, former advisor to government? He got sacked for ranking substances according to harms, oddly enough alcohol came out at or near the top and cannabis near the bottom. But the mantra of "war on drugs" won out again, we seem happy to pour loads of money into policing the use of substances but not to pour it instead into public health, countries where substance use problems are treated as public health issues seem to spend less and have fewer problems.