Most reasonable people would agree with the notion of using the government’s powers to help “problem drinkers” to drink less. It sounds like a good idea, unless you’re a weirdo libertarian type. Or a “problem drinker”. Building on this, the Scottish government recently passed a minimum alcohol price law with the stated intent of helping “hazardous” drinkers to drink less. But what’s the definition of a “hazardous” drinker? It’s almost certainly not what you’d expect:
A model of the possible effects of minimum pricing by the University of Sheffield has often been drawn upon by the media due to a lack of definite information on the effects of MAP. On the surface, the results look relatively reasonable to someone in favour of minimum alcohol pricing. At 50p per unit, the study suggests that the average ‘harmful’ drinker would be most likely to reduce their intake, followed by ‘hazardous’ drinkers, with ‘moderate’ drinkers suffering least, which, of course, all sounds very fair.
But on closer inspection, it appears as though my own drinking is hazardous. If you’re male and drink more than a pint a day of fairly standard lager on average, yours is too. If you’re female, you’re entitled to even less before you abandon moderation. ‘Binge drinking’ can be any more than 8 units in a single session, or three pints of lager. No, this is not a joke. Millions of British people, who certainly wouldn’t think of themselves as dangerous consumers of alcohol, are in this category. The words ‘hazardous’ and ‘binge’ seem almost bound to bring to mind serious, tabloid-beloved alcohol abuse. This isn’t the case.
[. . .]
Alcohol addiction is a serious social problem. Like all addiction, it’s closely associated with more severe health risks, mortality and crime, and requires the attention of government. Whether price increases help is debatable. An enormous 2009 meta-study of the effect of price on alcohol consumption certainly shows that alcohol consumption is inversely responsive to price. As the cost of alcohol rises, all groups drink less.
But the study also shows that heavy drinkers are significantly more inelastic than others, reacting less to price. This might well seem logical, as the group contains people who are addicted to alcohol. Alcoholics are less likely to consider increases in prices in the same way that casual drinkers do. Will some of the most dependent drinkers simply increase the amount they spend? We don’t yet know. Scotland is about to find out.
So aside from the basic nanny state meddling, the price hike won’t actually produce the reduction in alcohol consumption by the very folks it’s intended to target. It will increase profits for the producers of the cheapest forms of rotgut booze. What’s that old saw about unintended consequences again?
