Minimum Alcohol Pricing

[wastecoatwilly]

5 minutes ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

Sometimes when you read that someone  is increasing their chance of Cancer you just have to hit the "Like" button

I don't smoke or drink vodka more of a chancer than cancer.

[doulikefish]

On your booze cruises to gretna remember to stock up on plastic bottles when the 20p scheme kicks in [emoji23]

[Jim McLean's Ghost]

1 hour ago, doulikefish said:

On your booze cruises to gretna remember to stock up on plastic bottles when the 20p scheme kicks in

An extra 20p back on your 3L bottles of Frosty Jacks.

[Paco]

For those that missed it, the BBC were reporting on the news of worries about organised crime gangs bringing bottles to Scotland and recycling them for 20p a go.

Yes, really.

[doulikefish]

The guy from coca cola says somebody might smuggle one of his lorries across to get the cash from the emptys [emoji23]

For those that missed it, the BBC were reporting on the news of worries about organised crime gangs bringing bottles to Scotland and recycling them for 20p a go.

Yes, really.

[Detournement]

29 minutes ago, Paco said:

For those that missed it, the BBC were reporting on the news of worries about organised crime gangs bringing bottles to Scotland and recycling them for 20p a go.

Yes, really.

It happened in America.

And that inspired a classic Seinfeld episode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bottle_Deposit

Edit - The Seinfeld episode inspired the scam. Which is even better.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Detournement

[Lee Van Tee]

On 26/09/2019 at 19:30, Wee Bully said:

 

It certainly won’t be replacing the 8% of total sales.

Great to see it working (and apparently the drop is twice what had been modelled).

 

Not so great to see many people switching to coke over the last few years. And by coke I mean cocaine.

I take little notice of these figures myself. It's like the stats saying smoking is down. It is but most of the poorer smokers I know have started buying 50g pouches from the Barras which is about a third of the price they would pay for it in  an offy or supermarket.

[DA Baracus]

There will be a lot of folk who will be absolutely furious if it has actually helped, and absolutely delirious with joy if it hasn't.

[Suspect Device]

Anyone know if this report is true?

https://iea.org.uk/media/iea-evidence-so-far-suggests-minimum-pricing-in-scotland-has-been-an-expensive-flop/

 

Edit: Figures for 2018 so obviously too soon to have any effect.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/alcoholrelateddeathsintheunitedkingdom/2018

Edit2: While I was reading the ONS site, I noticed an interesting paragraph.

Quote

3. Alcohol-specific death by UK constituent country

Scotland experienced the fastest decrease in alcohol-specific death rates over time

Since the beginning of the time series in 2001, age-standardised rates of alcohol-specific deaths in Scotland have tended to be highest of the four UK constituent countries, while rates in England have tended to be lowest, as shown in Figure 4. In line with previous years, there were 20.8 alcohol-specific deaths per 100,000 people in Scotland in 2018, nearly twice the English rate of 10.7 deaths per 100,000. The Welsh rate was 13.1 deaths per 100,000, while figures for Northern Ireland will be published by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency later this year.

Despite Scotland’s higher rate of alcohol-specific deaths, it remains the only UK constituent country to show statistically significant improvement when comparing with 2001 rates. In comparison, both England and Wales had statistically significant increases over the same period.

So it was coming down before the introduction of minimum pricing. 

Edited December 8, 2019 by Suspect Device

[yoda]

1 hour ago, Suspect Device said:

Anyone know if this report is true?

https://iea.org.uk/media/iea-evidence-so-far-suggests-minimum-pricing-in-scotland-has-been-an-expensive-flop/

That's not a report, that's a comment from the IEA. Christopher Snowdon isn't an objective source (nor is he an economist or statistician, he's a "journalist").

Unless you're a hardline free-marketeer, it's safe to just file anything from the IEA alongside anything from the ASI: straight into the bin. 

[welshbairn]

6 minutes ago, yoda said:

That's not a report, that's a comment from the IEA. Christopher Snowdon isn't an objective source (nor is he an economist or statistician, he's a "journalist").

Unless you're a hardline free-marketeer, it's safe to just file anything from the IEA alongside anything from the ASI: straight into the bin. 

Writes for the Koch funded Spiked fighting environmental, alcohol and tobacco controls, calls himself a "lifestyle economist". 

[Baxter Parp]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52984817

Alcohol off-sales drop credited to minimum unit pricing

[Wee Bully]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52984817
Alcohol off-sales drop credited to minimum unit pricing

Excellent news - a full study, which shows the policy’s impact by comparing both the drop in Scotland and the trends in neighbouring territories where MUP wasn’t introduced.

[Boo Khaki]

'Big' government SNP policies improving the nation's health. Those b*****ds 

SNP bad etc etc

[SandyCromarty]

Minimum pricing of Alcohol has led to increase of drug use which was inevitable.

Swings and Roundabouts.

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

I assume millions of Scots are still going on booze cruises to Berwick to get marginally cheaper bevvy?

[topcat(The most tip top)]

where's saying that?

That might just be Sandy telling us what’s going on in his house

[Boo Khaki]

1 hour ago, SandyCromarty said:

Minimum pricing of Alcohol has led to increase of drug use which was inevitable.

Swings and Roundabouts.

Use of Class A's has been on the increase for years, well before minimum alcohol pricing was introduced. Even if that has continued since, it's not proof that the two are somehow intertwined. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

[SandyCromarty]

29 minutes ago, Boo Khaki said:

Use of Class A's has been on the increase for years, well before minimum alcohol pricing was introduced. Even if that has continued since, it's not proof that the two are somehow intertwined. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

A few years back, as a member of the Scottish Futures Forum I took part in an Alcohol and Drugs programme over 18 months, we used the main chamber for the initial meeting as the attendance and interest from various bodies was so large, two attendees were Chief Constables who gave us a talk of where Scotland was drug and alcohol wise, during the talk they emphasised that the figure for heroin users was at 15,000 and this hardly changed up or down from one year to the next, mostly due to overdose deaths, the main concern was the boom in what they described as 'recreational drug usage' and cheap alcohol with all the resulting damage that brought with it.

[Boo Khaki]

Yes, but heroin is not the only Class A, and for the sake of clarity, I was referring mainly to the abundance of cheap and freely available coke that's been on the scene for years.