Labour to raise taxes on alcohol?
Tax on alcohol should rise to reduce binge drinking among teenagers, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has said.
Why does Labour think tax will solve everything? If they don’t want binge drinking why have 24 hour drinking?
You know the drill everyone. It’s now time for my suggestions.
First tax on alcohol should be lowered, most of the time. At the moment £3.75 billion in tax revenue are lost to alcohol and tobacco smuggling. I don’t think we can stop this solely through policing and using customs. We should lower out tax on alcohol and tobacco to 5% above the European average. This would simply make it unprofitable for smugglers to go abroad to buy alcohol. Those that bought off smugglers would then have no choice but to buy from retailers. We could then experiment with legalising people bringing in alcohol and we could then downsize Customs and Excise which would save us further millions of pounds.
The majority of people are sensible drinkers. I don’t see why they should have to suffer tax increases.
Most people who binge drink are people who go night clubs and drink through the early hours of the morning. I am in favour of tax to partly solve the problem of binge drinking here but the taxes have to be variable (I seem to like a lot of variable-type policies).
Tax would increase to 10% above the level that they are right now after
There is a second part to dealing with this too. If people harm themselves while drunk and have to go to hospital they will be made to pay the full cost of their hospital treatment. While this wouldn’t work in the short term it would catch on in the long term because in the short term those that regularly get drunk will think nothing will happen to them and will drink anyway but when they start paying a lot more money to the NHS if they are injured a lot they will think about what they are doing.
My proposal would save a lot of money as Customs and Excise could be downsized as we wouldn’t need them for alcohol and tobacco which I think is their biggest job at present. The NHS would save money because those that injure themselves would have to pay for themselves and would not be entitled to free healthcare for that particular injury. Alcohol misuse among all age groups is estimated to cost the NHS £1.7bn a year.
I estimate that with these proposals I could save £2 billion per year (without taking into effect the alcohol tax) as well as cut binge drinking to a less serious level.
4 comments:
I'll drink to that...(-:
I always thought Switzerland would be expensive. As it has been 3 years since I was in UK, I would like to compare prices.
Cheap Supermarket: (Discounter like ASDA)
1 can (0.5 liters) 20 pence
This beer is considered cheap. However in a recent test by experts it got a good rating
Normal Supermarket: (Better quality)
1 can (0.5 liters) 40 pence
They also have exotic beers, which cost a bit more. A bottle (0.33 liters) is about 1 pound.
On my local brewery I pay 0.5 £ for a bottle of 0.33 liters. But its totally worth it ;)
Pubs:
If you go to normal pubs, like in your town, you pay around 1.5 £ for a “Stange” (that’s 0.33 liters). A “Grosses” is 0.5 liters and about 2.2 £
In club prices are much higher.
So, how are the prices in UK?
I don't know what the prices are but I do know the cheapest pint of John Smiths Extra Smooth (I think thats the name) you can get is £1.15.
Does anyone have any criticisms of my proposals?
The cost figure of £1.7 billion is close to the figure I have of £2 billion, total, though that was in 1992. (From Should Christians Drink? by Dr Peter Masters, p 34.)
He also reveals that 28,000 people* die prematurely in Britain each year from alcohol related causes and up to a million suffer serious harm, socially or physically.
*The figure for smoking related causes is much higher, however, at about 120,000 per year, though I guess this refers to older folk whose longevity is shortened somewhat by smoking related respiratory and other ailments and not associated with excessively premature death and serious physical/mental injury resulting from unrestricted alcohol consumption.
Masters further reveals that 1,000 children die each year through (I think) alcohol-induced violence, half the drivers under the age of 25 killed each year die through drink-driving and that alcohol is "heavily implicated" in half of all recorded crimes, including murders, child-abuse and wife batterings* cases.
*'Partner' battering, these days, I guess, in which case the results would be worse because woman cohabiting suffer 5 times the amount of domestic violence than married woman.
In agreement with independent American research (Samuel Bacchiocchi, Wine in the Bible) Masters cites the findings of the Royal College of Psychiatrists which concluded that damage to health stemming alcohol consumption "[dwarfed] the problems of illicit drug abuse" and was "vastly greater than that caused by heroin addiction."
Note I'm not disagreeing with the suggested policies as such, simply aiming to put the whole issue in context.
For a truly rip-roaring analysis of 'the demon drink' from one of the 'old-time' Methodist Bible-thumpers of the 1930s, Billy Sunday, see the following:
http://billysunday.org/
sermons/booze.php3
Sunday was the last man to bring an actual Christian revival to the USA. The results of Billy Graham's 'crusades' were minor and temporary by comparison.
Tragically, Sunday became so heavily involved in his ministry, resulting in so much time away from his family, that his sons departed from the faith and died violently, at least one, I believe, with heart-breaking irony, from alcohol abuse.
A warning not to get too heavily involved in extra-family activities.
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