Public Meeting Kingsbridge - Cheap Booze, who pays?
A lively interactive meeting to discuss the issues around cheap alcohol and the impact on levels of crime and disorder that have followed. The evidence is clear from international research that pricing and availability are the factors that have the greatest impact on binge drinking. We must allow the police and councils greater control to shut down problem premises. Minimum price alcohol of 50p per unit is the only way to prevent big supermarkets from flogging off cheap alcohol as loss leaders. We know that these promotions are used by problem drinkers to ‘preload’ so that they are already drunk before they leave home and that children appear to have no difficulty in obtaining cheap alcohol. I am not in favour of remorselessly increasing taxation, which works against licenced premises, but would like to see them able to compete on a level playing field; only minimum price alcohol can achieve this aim.
