Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.
Italian proverb
Two-for-one specials. Alcohol lollipops to make booze fun to teens. Supermarket prices that reward buying in bulk. And pubs on every street corner, making it easy to have a liquid lunch.
No wonder that Britain’s notorious binge drinking is so out of control that the government’s top medical advisor came out last week in favor of stiff new price policies to cut off the massive flow of cut-rate alcohol.
“Cheap alcohol is killing us as never before,” Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said as he delivered his annual Public Health report. “The quality of life of families and in cities and towns up and down the country is being eroded by the effects of excessive drinking.”
Donaldson described a culture where anything goes – with discount drinks, happy hour specials and underage drinking – helping to cause public health costs to soar to new heights. Anyone who goes out late at night in London or other major cities would know what he was talking about – it has become common for teenages and young adults to “drink until they drop.”
“Let’s try and imagine a country where nobody is physically or sexually assaulted because of alcohol. Let’s try and imagine a country where nobody dies in an accident caused by alcohol, where no child has to cower in the corner while its mother is beaten by a drunken partner, where the streets are welcoming for all on a Saturday night and where the streets are free of urine and vomit on a Sunday morning,” Donaldson said.
He added that per capital alcohol consumption has fallen since 1970 in many European countries, but has increased by 40 percent in Britain, where beer, wine and spirits have remained relatively cheap, particularly when bought in bulk from supermarkets that use low alcohol prices as a marketing lure.
Bringing in a minimum price regime based on a charge of at least 50 pence (70 cents) per alcohol unit would have a substantial, immediate impact, Donaldson said.
“Every year there would be 3,393 fewer deaths, 97,900 fewer hospital admissions, 45,000 fewer crimes and 296,900 fewer sick days.”