The Scotch Whisky Association vs the People of Scotland
Capitalism's Ugly Face
Yesterday was one of those days when it is OK to be proud of your government. If a governments job is to protect its citizens, then yesterday the Scottish Government won a long overdue win for the people of Scotland. In the other corner we can see a trade association showing up capitalism at its venal worst.
It has been five years since the Scottish Parliament passed legislation mandating the minimum pricing of alcohol, but it is only now that the government has finally gotten passed the last legal challenge.
It is to the eternal shame of the Scotch Whisky Association that they found every court to appeal the legislation, never finding a court that agreed with their position. But appealing to the last and all because the Scottish Government wanted to ensure that alcohol couldn’t be sold for less than water.
Scotland has a lethally dangerous relationship with alcohol and the Scottish Government wanted to slow down our access to the cheapest booze, the sort that problem drinkers tend to gravitate toward.The news reports have been filled with the stories of the 3,000 plus alcohol related deaths in Scotland but this is only the tip of the iceberg. The leading weapon in Scottish assault cases is the Buckfast bottle(one of the products in the crosshairs of the Scottish legislation). Because of cheap booze our A&E departments spend most Friday and Saturday nights looking like a war zone.
We are not even close to the end of the the problems, alcoholics live in society, they live with spouses and families, with parents and siblings, with children. Only someone who has lived with the terror of an alcoholic on a binge will know the genuine terror, the sense of clinging on until the pass out and peace is regained, as an adult dealing with this is hard, for a child it is causing deep emotional scars that may come back to haunt society generations later, allowing the effect to ripple out further than you can imagine.
Now this legislation may only make alcohol a little bit more expensive, but alcoholics can only drink until there is no more(it is a strange sense of relief when 10pm hits and you are then dealing with a finite amount of alcohol). If that means that they have 20% less to drink then it is 20% less traumatic. Relationships may survive 20% less, A&E will be significantly quieter with 20% less. Children will sleep better with 20% less.
What enraged me was that the Scotch Whisky Association fought this legislation. It will now cost a minimum of £14 for a bottle of spirit. I don’t believe that SWA members sell many bottles at that price point. For a long time they have been working to increase the value of their product, creating a high quality high price product treasured around the world. They should have welcomed this legislation clearing out those who give whisky a bad name. But instead they chose to fight.
They claimed this was against free trade rules, so to defend one of the tenets of capitalism they fought to the end, for the right to do what they wanted for as long as they wanted disregarding the social cost that someone else will pick up, just to ensure that they maximise profit.
It will be a few years before we get an idea of just how many people this legislation saves, and by extension and idea of how many lives that we can lay at the door of the SWA.
Today was a small victory, a small step toward a better country.
