In 2001 at the beginning of its election campaign New Labour under Tony Blair sent the following text to students:
cdnt give a XXXX 4 lst ordrs? Vote labour on thrsdy 4 xtra time
The text was intended to promote New Labours plan to liberalise alcohol laws. These have included as well as 24 hour drinking, support for drink promotions and a taxation policy which has seen the affordability of alcohol enhanced.
Labour's policy has been driven by the Alcohol Industry who have been keen to maximise their profits. Health and scientific advice has been ignored.
Interesting to see that this cynical policy is coming back to haunt them as this article in the Daily Mail and this one in the Daily Telegraph show. The graph below shows the human cost of alcohol policy.
Minimum pricing will work as advocated by the Chief Medical Officer
The graph shows the incidence of liver cirrhosis rising sharply from 1990 in England and Wales and from 1995 in Scotland (and even then it was rising quickly from 1970). 24 hour drinking wasn't introduced until 2001 and the Labour party didn't get elected until 1997. I also think that the term 24 hour drinking is fairly misleading- in reality, I don't think there are very many places with 24 hour licenses and, lets be honest, those that do have long licenses are likely to be clubs where other substances are much more popular. Doesn't this kind of suggest that the liberalisation of the licensing laws might not have had much impact?
ReplyDeleteThe article by Professor Williams says that one case of alcohol related corrhosis has been seen in a 22 year old- one case doesn't really mean that there's an epidemic.