Sober Thoughts on Binge Drinking

Civitas, 20 October 2009

Britain is currently suffering an epidemic of excessive drinking that, it is estimated, will exact a toll of 91,000 lives within the next decade. Currently, to attract customers, supermarkets and nightclubs often sell alcohol at very low prices. To curb its consumption, some are calling for a minimum unit price, but the Government is resisting one on the grounds its imposition would penalise moderate drinkers too much.

Last Thursday, Channel Four showed a very revealing documentary about drinking entitled ‘The Red Lion’, that being the most common name of pubs in this country. Viewers of it were taken on a whistle-stop tour of a dozen so named pubs at various different parts of the country to show who frequents them and why.

What was made all too clear by the documentary was just how integral a part of life in this country the public house has been until only very recently, and for how many people it has been the hub of their social lives. Sadly, it seems pubs are now closing down at a very rapid rate, and what, for many, has been an integral element of civil society is going the way of annual works outings, Lyons Tea Houses, and other once vital elements of a now largely vanished Britain.

However, the first Red Lion pub shown in the documentary was one in Newport and it appeared to be thriving. Every Wednesday night, it serves as the meeting point for members of a local university netball team. These young women apparently economise all week so that every Wednesday they can drink themselves to oblivion.

Newport seems a bit of a sin-bin, with nightclubs there allegedly offering promotions allowing young people to drink as much they like all night for no more than a £5 entrance fee.

John Stuart Mill was opposed on essentially libertarian grounds to the taxing of drink for the mere purpose of restricting its consumption. However, because it was a non-essential commodity, he did think that governments could and should tax it heavily, if they were in need of raising as much revenue as they could through indirect taxation.

In his famous essay ‘On Liberty’, he addressed the question whether ‘the State… should… take measures to render the means of drunkenness more costly … [so as to] discourage conduct which it deems contrary to the best interests of the agent’. He answered his question so:

‘To tax stimulants for the sole purpose of making them more difficult to be obtained… would be justified only if [their entire prohibition] … would be justifiable… [But people’s] choice of pleasures, and their mode of expending their income, after satisfying their legal and moral obligations  to the State and to individuals, are their own concern, and must rest with their own judgement.’

That would seem to rule out imposing a minimum unit price on alcohol as a way of to limiting its consumption. However, in that same essay, Mill also said several other things germane to the issue which point in a very different direction. One was that:

‘The interest of dealers [in strong drinks] in promoting intemperance is a real evil, and justifies the state in imposing restrictions… which, but for that justification, would be infringements of legitimate liberty.’ Supermarkets selling alcohol below cost price might be considered an instance of such promotion of excessive drinking that the state might be thought entitled to prohibit.

Mill also offered another possible line of argument in favour of making alcohol less available to young people. He wrote:

‘Diminishing the occasions of temptation [to drink excessively] … is suited only to a state of society in which the labouring classes are avowedly treated as children… No person who sets due value on freedom will give his adhesion to their being so governed, unless after all efforts have been exhausted to educate them for freedom and govern them as freemen, and it has been definitively proved that they can only be governed as children.’ [my emphasis]

Having seen last Thursday’s documentary, I am beginning to wonder whether it has not now been definitively proved that, despite all attempts to educate them for freedom, insufficient young people are ready for self-governance before the age of 21 to justify giving them the choice of whether to harm themselves by immoderate drinking.

Should my doubts on that score be justified, there would be a case for the drinking age to be raised to 21, if not for imposing a minimum alcohol price. Thoughts of readers on this issue would be welcome.