Welcome to the final (we’re sad to say) installment of guest blogger Henry Yeomans’ new series here on Points. Henry, a Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Leed’s School of Law, finishes off his series on changing conceptions of drink regulation in Britain by examining the implications of England’s newly-proposed minimum alcohol pricing.
In March 2012, England and Wales reached something of a turning point regarding the regulation of alcohol. The Coalition Government released a new alcohol strategy that put forth the intention for a fixed, legal minimum price per unit of alcohol. Under these plans, it would be illegal for any retailer to sell an alcoholic beverage for less than the minimum unit price, which the strategy suggests may be initially set at 40p. The Scottish Government intends to introduce a minimum price of 45p per unit and the Northern Ireland Assembly has backed similar proposals, meaning cheap drink may soon be a hazy memory for Britons. But why is a minimum price considered necessary? The Prime Minister’s foreword to the England and Wales strategy explicitly states the rationale for this new policy: it is needed to tackle the “scourge of violence caused by binge drinking.” The Government considers binge drinking responsible for crime and violence which “drains resources in our hospitals, generates mayhem on our streets and spreads fear in our communities.” The Prime Minister is very clear that “this isn’t about stopping responsible drinking,” but is about targeting the small minority who drink to excess and cause problems for the rest of society. This strategy therefore reads like a rallying call; responsible drinkers are asked to unite behind tough pricing restrictions that will reform the behaviour of the irresponsible. This does not address the question, however, of where this idea of a minimum pricing comes from. Furthermore, is it simply a strategy for reducing binge drinking or will it have wider effects?
Targeting binge drinking through formal regulation is nothing new. New Labour adopted a fairly liberal line on licensing, famously removing statutory restrictions on opening times for licensed premises in 2005. But Tony Blair’s Government were dogged by accusations that these liberalising measures were fuelling binge drinking by young people and so worsening public drunkenness and disorder. The Blair Government responded by introducing a raft of new restrictions; alcohol-free zones, drink banning orders, and restrictions on drinks promotions were all efforts to clamp down on ‘irresponsible’ binge drinking. This regulatory approach, justified essentially as providing more freedom for the responsible and less for the irresponsible, echoed earlier government strategies. My last post described how, in the 1960s, licensing was somewhat liberalised while the regulation of some of the specific harmful consequences associated with drinking, including youth drunkenness, was enhanced. The Coalition Government’s current efforts to tackle binge drinking are, in some ways, simply an intensification of this older consequentialist preoccupation with the unacceptability or irresponsibility of youth drunkenness.
In some ways, however, minimum pricing represents a significant challenge to the consequentialist regulation that has been dominant since the 1960s. James Nicholls and Pekka Sulkunen, among others, have documented the development of “total consumption theory” (TCT) from the mid-twentieth century onwards. This school of thought was originally based on demographic research that suggested the best way to reduce alcohol-related harm was to reduce alcohol consumption amongst a whole population. In 2008, the Sheffield Study provided further support for this perspective by finding that minimum pricing, a measure which affects a whole population’s access to alcohol, would reduce a wide range of harms associated with alcohol, from throat cancer to unemployment. For advocates of TCT, this evidence implies that the distinction of “responsible” and “irresponsible” drinking is fatuous, as the reduction of all forms of drinking is linked to decreases in harm. All drinking, moderate and private as well as excessive and public, must become the legitimate object of governance.