Listen / Read
Firstly, visit Platitude of the Day to learn of Reverend Bell’s recycling of his hardly amusing anecdote. Good. Now, alcohol legislation in Scotland. They want to set a minimum price on it, to discourage the alcohol abuse made ridiculously easy by the absurd cheapness of the booze.
Seems fair enough to me. Alcohol causes much more damage to the population than certain drugs that are widely enjoyed even though they’re not supposed to be. It’s all rather absurd. It’s one of those topsy-turvy sorts of things that comes from cultural tradition and has little to do with any rational assessment and it’s not going to change any time soon. Kind of like religion.
Making it more expensive is, considering the weight of evidence, the least they should do. I don’t really like to say that because, like most, I like a drink and if it doesn’t leave me feeling brassic I like it even better. But the cost, health-wise, socially, and the cost to the tax payer is frightening. I should probably check, but I can’t be arsed. No doubt you’ll hear it on the news again before long.
But while Reinhold Niebuhr’s idea of justice being the ‘political currency of love’ seems attractive, it seems a little flawed when you consider the justice meted out to so many offenders today simply returns them to the street with a overwhelming likelihood that they’ll simply re-offend. Where’s the love of the community in that justice?
Similarly, while increasing the cost of booze seems to be the right thing to do, it doesn’t remove the conditions in which people feel they have to turn to drink. Of course alcoholics come from all walks of life; addiction itself is a biochemical and psychological thing, widely considered in pathological terms. But we also know that socio-economic factors are too often the catalyst for the manifestation of such tendencies. Which doesn’t bode so well right now.