Helen Martin: It's not that easy to change minds

Published on Friday 3 September 2010 11:34

THE SNP's determination to raise the price of booze would be a lot easier to swallow if it followed genuine research into the alternatives. But it's a quick and easy "fix" to harmful and antisocial bevvying and is one of those well-intentioned moves that has every chance of back-firing.

It's backed by some medical experts who would like to see prices pitched even higher than the Government intends. Medical opinion carries a lot of weight. But while the effects of extreme consumption often result in medical problems, the actual purchase and imbibing is sociological and cultural . . . and there's no reason to suppose doctors know any more about that than they do about car mechanics or horticulture.

If the solution to anything we didn't like, or anything that caused a problem, was simply to price it out of reach, life would be a doddle. We know very well that doesn't work.

We also know it's almost certain to give rise to other problems which politicians and doctors on comfortable, middle-class salaries and of a generally law-abiding temperament, don't seem to have considered.

For one thing . . . a burgeoning black market which will, in all probability, be run by the same people who trade in illicit drugs. It doesn't matter that the price rises aren't utterly spectacular, because the perception that drink is going to be beyond the poor man's pocket is enough to get the ball rolling.

It also has the Robin Hood factor, because this is a tax that will not affect the affluent who buy wines by the case and the finest malts to swig back in large measures after a hard day at business meetings and seminars. They'll hardly notice the difference in their credit card statements.

But for the poor who feel they are being hard done by, there will always be some ingenious if unscrupulous entrepreneurs who will come up with a cheap alternative. And that doesn't necessarily mean genuine wines, spirits and beers that have merely fallen off the back of a lorry. Home brews, containing God knows what and even heavier on the alcoholic proof levels, are probably being experimentally hubble-bubbled up as we speak. When the poor can't access the formal stuff, they go informal. It's a tradition. I remember my Irish uncle's poteen could make hairs grow on your teeth - that's about all I remember of it. There are probably still "stills" in Ireland and moonshine cottage industries in US "Deliverance" communities to this day, not to mention the home-made rums of the Caribbean.

Selling it might be illegal, but as we have seen from allegedly legal and lethal "highs" as well as clearly illegal drugs . . . so what? And we know how much crime is down to people financing their drug habit; shouldn't we at least consider the same might happen with booze?

Apart from teenagers (who seem nowadays to be perpetually on the hunt for mood and mind-altering substances whether they drink, smoke, eat, sniff or inject them) people don't generally decide to drink alcohol just because it's cheap.

It's inbuilt in our national psyche that in order to have a good time at a party, dinner party, wedding, funeral, christening, a parliamentary or council reception, or a night out, alcohol is a prerequisite.

Lavish entertainment, even for the most upstanding members of our society who wouldn't be seen dead on a drunk and disorderly charge, often includes a "free bar".

Holidays are sold on the strength of including all you can eat and drink.

A tee-totaller is seen as either an oddity or a reformed alcoholic who daren't have a sip of sherry. And being drunk is accepted as a rite of teenage passage, and something that is bound to happen occasionally at least up to and including middle-age.

It's not about money, it's about mindset. Raising the price may thwart poor teenagers, but the rich ones will still be able to drink their own body weight and throw it up again a few hours later. You might get a better class of violent drunk in A and E, but they're still a violent drunk.

Confirmed smokers still buy fags at between 5 and 6 a packet. Such reduction as there has been in smoking didn't come about because of pricing. It was health education and the inability to smoke in a pub, an aeroplane, a bus, a train, the office or anywhere else apart from your own home or in the open air, that made it thoroughly unfashionable and persuaded so many to give up.

Changing attitudes is much harder and takes generations. But jacking up booze prices isn't even going to raise public revenue . . . just supermarket profits. It's a thoroughly bad idea.