IF IT’S NOT IN THE MODEL – IT WON’T HAPPEN!

It has just been announced that the Welsh Assembly Bill to introduce minimum unit pricing (MUP) in Wales has been given Royal Assent. Predictably, the usual suspects – Alcohol Concern, Alcohol Focus Scotland and the Institute of Alcohol Studies are all crowing about this and calling for its immediate introduction in England. So, the Welsh Assembly government clearly aren’t interested in seeing how MUP works out in Scotland first – so much for “evidence-based policy”.

But there never was any real-world evidence for MUP, its supporters rely entirely on the discredited speculative numerology of the Sheffield Alcohol Pricing Model (SAPM). This purports to show how a minimum unit price at different levels will reduce consumption, and the benefits in terms of reduced alcohol-related harms of all kinds will cascade down in a sort of hierarchy.

But there were two things that SAPM neglected to model and that economists have identified as likely unintended consequences of this kind of government price intervention. One is market displacement; the other product substitution. Let me explain: market displacement is what happens when consumers wake up one morning and find a popular product has suddenly rocketed in price and they can no longer afford it. Consumers vote with their feet and seek a similar product in the black market.

This happened in Russia in 2010 when the government imposed a minimum price of 220 roubles for a half litre bottle of vodka. Consumption was displaced into the black market where people bought cheap and dangerous moonshine. In response, the Russian Government was forced to reduce the minimum price to 185 roubles in 2012 – approximately the price it was sold at before the government intervened. Consumer responses to government regulation completely neutered the minimum price policy. Will consumers do this in Scotland and Wales? Too early to tell, but anecdotally we know that Tesco’s car park in Carlisle is full of cars and vans with Scottish number plates! Some of these will no doubt rock-up on council estates in Glasgow and flog cheap English booze to price-conscious Scots.

But what of product substitution? Remember all those stories about cheap white cider being sold to vulnerable street drinkers and alcoholics with chaotic lives? MUP will solve all that by pricing these products out of reach of the poor. So, in Scotland a 3 litre bottle of Frosty Jack’s white cider made from apple concentrate and with an ABV of 7.5% was selling for £4.25 before MUP. OMG! Pocket money prices; alcohol cheaper than water – something must be done. Well, now it has been. A 3 litre bottle of Frosty Jack’s in Scotland now costs £11.25 – thanks to MUP - and sales have fallen off a cliff. So, problem solved then? Not quite.

If you’re the kind of drinker who necks a 3 litre bottle of strong white cider in one session it’s safe to say you’re not a cider connoisseur. To be blunt, you do it to get off your head – blotto! These people haven’t gone away; they haven’t all signed the pledge. They still want to get blotto but their tipple of choice is now priced out of reach. So, might they seek a substitute product? What else can get you off your head for the night? Well, a gram of the synthetic cannabinoid known as ‘Spice’ sells for just £6. A bag of heroin off the streets of Glasgow can be bought for as little as £8. If you want to understand the effects of Spice on the homeless, visit Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester and see for yourself. And deaths from heroin and other opioids are now at a record high.

So, what happens next? Answers on a postcard please. I simply ask: in what rational universe would we contrive for a bag of heroin to be nearly 30% cheaper and a gram of spice 46% cheaper than a 3 litre bottle of cider? Victory for public health! Vindication of the policy of minimum unit pricing!

Ah, but you see, these things weren’t in the Sheffield model – so can’t possibly happen – it’s been peer-reviewed you know! And the academics are quietly confident this will all work. This is what can happen when politicians who don’t understand how markets work throw a price regulation into the middle of a free market, and it enters culture. The unintended consequences kick-in. This is what can happen when activist academics, living in ivory towers, persuade dumb politicians that if only they can control the price mechanism they’ll be able to socially engineer the sober society and we’ll all live happier, healthier lives. Meanwhile, back in the real world, I just don’t think it’s that simple.

LORDS AND COMMONERS

Last week saw the publication of the House of Lords Select Committee Review of the Licensing Act 2003 (LA2003). It also saw the CAMRA Members’ Weekend in Bournemouth on Saturday 8^th April, at which I was a speaker.

Having read the HoL Review I was struck by how most, if not all, of its proposals for change reflected the fact that the Committee had listened to a wide range of views and was thereby able to arrive at what were, for the most part, a balanced set of recommendations that avoided siding with some of the more swivel-eyed members of the ‘public health’ community, who of course wanted a public health licensing objective. In that regard it contrasts most sharply with the way in which the Chief Medical Officers’ of Health revised drinking guidelines were compiled – by a who’s who of the modern neo-temperance movement.

The call for the government to abandon the Late Night Levy and Early Morning Alcohol Restriction Orders was also very welcome as was their Lordships acceptance of the value of local partnership working – particularly Business Improvement Districts. Council members sitting on local authority licensing committees should be trained, their Lordships said. Here! Here!

I did however find it a little curious that the release of the Review suggested that the committee members found the Licensing Act 2003 to be “fundamentally flawed”. I cannot agree – for the most part I think it works well and I think it is regrettable that modifications to it have rowed back from its original radicalism in order to accommodate those who were horrified at what was perceived back in 2003 as a liberalising Act. The crux of their Lordships’ concern is the view that it was a mistake to create new ‘licensing committees’ of council members when a system of planning committees already exists.

No one could argue with the idea that licensing and planning should work closely together – that is why the local planning department is a ‘responsible authority’ under the LA2003, and must be notified of any new licence application or application for a major variation of an existing licence. But to combine licensing and planning? In the 10 years since the LA2003 came in to force I have never heard that suggestion made. So, a little ‘left field’ it seems to me – not least because the sale of alcohol will continue to have its own laws and regulations and its own legal precedents. The Committee’s recommendation in this regard deserves to be studied carefully, but at first blush this seems a curious proposal.

So we know what the great and the good think of our licensing system, and perhaps by inference of our drinking culture. But what does the ordinary drinker think? Well, on Saturday 8^th April I had the privilege of addressing around a thousand CAMRA members at their annual shindig down in Bournemouth. Sometimes the alcohol and society debate seems be conducted between opposing groups consisting of industry players or health lobby fanatics; groups united only by their mutual loathing. The title of my talk ‘The Modern Anti-Alcohol Movement – Temperance Without the Hymns’ does indeed reflect this divide. So I was curious to hear the questions and comments from an audience of informed and influential consumers.

I argued that every society from the most ancient to the most modern has had at least one legally or socially accepted intoxicant – something that changes mood, social interaction or consciousness. Ours of course is beverage alcohol. But the widespread use of intoxicants throughout different societies and historical epochs suggests to me that the need to change your mood or consciousness is a fundamental human need. As such, in a society like ours, access to beverage alcohol within a legal framework becomes nothing less than a human right and must be defended.

Of course no one in the modern, ant-alcohol ‘public health’ community would openly call for the outright legal prohibition of alcohol, they know such suggestions would be ridiculed. But ‘public health’ harbours the same prohibitionist ambition as their clerical forbears, albeit prohibition by stealth. They call for a population-wide reduction in alcohol consumption, but will never tell you to what level. Thus the direction of travel is obvious, but the destination is never mentioned. A bit like Brexit!

I think the drinkers’ voice needs to be heard in this debate. I listened to that voice at CAMRA, down in Bournemouth, and what a passionate voice it was! I was able to announce a new, CAMRA-inspired initiative – the formation of the ‘Drinkers’ Voice’. This organisation, once set up, will articulate the voice of the consumer – the “ordinary drinker” – in the alcohol-society debate. It is time that voice was heard in the public square. Watch this space.