Irish Political News

I often find it interesting when I read the pages of such quality newspapers as the 'Daily Mail' or listen to pontificating politicans only to hear repeated outrage at how cheap booze is. Invariably, such complaints are accompanied by condemnation of the supermarket chains responsible for offering deals on alcohol, backed-up with various unsavoury accounts of drink-fuelled thuggery.

However, while drink doubtlessly plays a major role in street violence and other criminality, it's a red herring to suggest that bumping up the price of booze will solve the problem. It's also interesting that those commentators usually found making such calls wouldn't find it a problem forking out quite a few quid on a quality wine- presumably it's only the well-to-do who should have the right to get hammered.

The fact is that demand for alcohol, like that for most other addictive pleasures such as tobacco, is inelastic- in other words, the effect of price changes on demand is less than proportional. If people want to get drunk, they'll get drunk.

There is a strong drinking culture on these islands, but it isn't caused by 25p cans of bland, watery beer from Sainsbury's. Pushing up the price won't stop those who want to binge-drink from doing so- it will serve, however, to eat further into the limited cash reserves of many of those people who find themselves in a poverty-drinking-depression cycle, which will make the situation worse. Let's face facts- it's low-income drinkers about whom the aforementioned commentators are talking when they condemn the sale of cheap booze- that's why such 'moral guardians' focus in on the issue of price, because they think that by increasing the cost of low-grade alcohol in the supermarkets, it can be priced out of the range of such people, making everything fine and dandy.

However, if this issue is to be dealt with responsibly and effectively, then education needs to take place. People need to learn of the dangers of alcohol from a young age. Efforts also need to be made to reduce the glamourous appeal of drinking- the fact that it's seen as something that only adults can do is the very thing that stimulates many teenagers into getting into the binge-drinking swing of things in the first place. Meanwhile, in continental Europe there is a lot less of a problem with regard to alcohol abuse, arguably due to the presence of wine around the dinner table as a matter of course. I'm not advocating feeding vodka to toddlers, but it's the forbidden fruit element of drinking that draws youngsters towards its charms in the first place.

Alcohol is also a lot cheaper to buy abroad, which contradicts the idea that there is a strong link between price and over-consumption.

It's all too easy to complain about low-price grog in the supermarkets, but aside from the fact that such rants are discriminatory against those who can't afford to dish out cash on fine beverages, it ignores the real problem of overdrinking that affects all sections of our society.

Instead of making scapegoats of the supermarkets (who, after all, are only meeting the demand of adult consumers) or assuming that anti-social behaviour is caused by allowing 'poor' people to access alcohol by making it cheap, it is the responsibility of society as a whole to look at ways of encouraging responsibile drinking. Drink-driving has become taboo in recent years, so there's always room to change opinions and behaviour in relation to the more general issue of alcohol consumption.