Minimum alcohol pricing is nigh

andekwarhola wrote: »

It's typical of a lot of people in here.

Either recovering boozehounds themselves or butthurt about other boozehounds in their life so want to spoil it for everybody, including people that can handle alcohol, instead of addressing or dealing with their own issues.

Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. -
H.L. Mencken

What's even more ludicrous that this is purely a piece of legislation to help a specific sector of the alcohol industry in Ireland but they're so excited about the chance to wag the finger and project their issues on others that they choose not to join the dots.

This. If this legislation is "successful" then pub sales will go up. So much for public health being its aim.

By your standards maybe ... not by anyone's standards

That exact same product is available for far cheaper elsewhere.

Do you think the exact same product is worse for the health of a person in Ireland than say in Spain or Germany?

Not a moot point comparing ourselves to Europe

joe40 wrote: »

Galahad lager, 75 cent for 500 ml is cheap by anyone's standards.
The rest of Europe can have cheap alcohol, available everywhere and long opening hours, not the same problems with alcohol as we do. Britain as well. Moot point comparing ourselves with Europe

If the rest of Europe can have those things without having the same alcohol problems as we do, doesn't that suggest that the problem isn't cost?

KrustyUCC wrote: »

By your standards maybe ... not by anyone's standards

That exact same product is available for far cheaper elsewhere.

Do you think the exact same product is worse for the health of a person in Ireland than say in Spain or Germany?

Not a moot point comparing ourselves to Europe

What these people are getting at without coming out and saying it, is that because some people behave badly and get involved in criminal antics (vandalism, violence, domestic abuse, drunk driving etc), the rest of us are fair, acceptable "collateral damage" in terms of it being worth making our lives a little harder for the sake of preventing scumbags doing scummy things while on alcohol.

This would be a non-issue if our justice system dealt with scumbags appropriately instead of letting them go any time they get arrested and convicted, but since everyone's apparently given up on tha ever becoming a reality, we're into the territory of it being acceptable to throw everyone under the bus in order to make scumbags a little less likely to act like scumbags. :mad:

Again, it's this mentality that individual freedom doesn't matter, and that collectively punishing everyone because it's easier, cheaper and quicker than spending the time and money on a justice system which specifically targets the scumbags and only the scumbags, is an acceptable way to run a country.

Personally I find the ideology morally abhorrent.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Brewing a couple of Christmas stouts myself Honestly if there's one good thing about this legislation it's that it piqued my initial interest in home brewing, and having been doing it since April I'd highly recommend it,
I'm still only using pre-extracted kits and starting to make minor alterations, but even then you end up paying €20-€30 for 40 pints of beer which is far superior to what you'd get in the average supermarket or Offie for the same price.

Where can you buy home-brew beer kits in Ireland? I'm in search of a hobby, if only to keep me from wasting my time on boards.ie

Leroy42 wrote: »

But it is not just scumbags that cause problems. Alcohol has a long history of making otherwise calm and rationale people into nutjobs.

We have massive numbers drink driving. Countless domestic violence cases, numerous cases of the trainee doctor or bridesmaid getting too drunk and starting fights or hitting cops. (these are just examples I am not making any claims about all trainee doctors or bridesmaids!)

It is too easy to simply say that it is scumbags.

But you do accept that it's not everyone and not even a majority of those who drink, right?

Leroy42 wrote: »

But it is not just scumbags that cause problems. Alcohol has a long history of making otherwise calm and rationale people into nutjobs.
We have massive numbers drink driving. Countless domestic violence cases, numerous cases of the trainee doctor or bridesmaid getting too drunk and starting fights or hitting cops. (these are just examples I am not making any claims about all trainee doctors or bridesmaids!)
It is too easy to simply say that it is scumbags.

Does any other country have a situation where nearly 50% of people charged with drink driving get off on loopholes? Where senior police are ordered not to write off penalty points, including their own continue to do so and suffer no consequences? Where police fake 1 million breath tests?

To hit a cop when drunk you'd have to find one first.

Relying on MUP to do something about drink driving makes as much sense as relying on the street price of illegal drugs to combat drugged driving.
Besides, isn't it mostly people in pubs driving home that are drink driving? Do you have stats showing it's mostly people drinking at home?

Let's have comptence in policing and prosecution of drink driving first.

I'm a drinker, I like drink as much as anyone and l have been hammered plenty of times. For me anyway this not drinkers versus non drinkers.
However we have long standing cultural issues with alcohol consumption that many other European countries don't have. Some do of course, we're not alone with problem drinking.

If this measure would help in some way to reduce excessive alcohol consumption and harmful drinking, then I'm willing to support it.

If you want to reduce binge drinking among young people in a non-coercive manner, you need to address why we have such a chronic issue with self-esteem in Ireland, such that the only way many young adults can feel confident is to artificially shut up the "you're not good enough, keep quiet and go home" voice in their heads which prevents them from expressing themselves without fear and self-doubt.

Until we do that, making it harder for them to access alcohol through price increases explicitly designed to target students and young graduates on entry level wages is essentially robbing them of their coping mechanism without solving the underlying issue. Personally I find that ideology cruel and perverse.

Things are slowly changing now that the Catholic Ireland influence is ebbing away, but we're still a generation or two away from the whole encouragement of self-depreciation and sexual introversion thing being entirely eradicated. Until we achieve that, people are going to want to use mind altering substances to inhibit their inhibitions, and in my view preventing them from doing so is going to make a lot of people a lot less happy in the short term.

Irish (and British) teenagers get drunk more often than their European counterparts.
We do have a problem with excessive drinking among many of our teenagers. That is a fact
I can accept that people have different opinions about mup, but to deny that we, as a society, have a problem in this regard is just daft.

Leroy42 wrote: »

Again, that is all very well but this MAP does not address any of your concerns. We already have relatively higher priced alcohol, and we know that even in the tough times people still spend money on it. So simply upping the price is not the answer.

If a pint cost a million euro I suspect there would not be many buyers so it is wrong to say upping the price of drink is not one of the solutions.

Leroy42 wrote: »

Particularly when it is only upping it in one particular area and the money raised it not of any benefit to society. It is simply taking money from the public to give to corporations. That doesn't make any sense.

The minimum price proposal might result in more money for the retailers but who cares. That does not bother me, why should it? I am not jealous of people who make profits, I am too busy with my own interests to worry about somebody making a profit. The important thing is there will be less drink sold.

Leroy42 wrote: »

By all means go with a MAP style set up, but by way of a levy, that is payable directly back to the government, and ringfenched to do the things, I think, most people would agree with. Things like education, more money for sports facilities, more money for dance halls, boxing gyms, skateboard parks, film clubs etc etc. Give people a reason not to drink rather that trying to force them not to.

I think the reason the MAP is so important is because the drinks industry want to fish and hook new drinkers. They will even go to the extent of giving free drink at student events to establish a new generation of drinkers. If you try to impose minimum pricing by putting a levy of say one euro on every unit of alcohol to nullify the free drink ploy, the the cost of drink would be astronomical (which some of us would welcome).

joe40 wrote: »

Irish (and British) teenagers get drunk more often than their European counterparts.
We do have a problem with excessive drinking among many of our teenagers. That is a fact
I can accept that people have different opinions about mup, but to deny that we, as a society, have a problem in this regard is just daft.

We should be tackling the reasons people feel the need to do it though. Binge drinking is essentially a form of self-medication. To increase the barriers to that without tackling the issues people are trying to obliviate away is messed up IMO.

realitykeeper wrote: »

If a drunk person never bothered you, I am guessing you are either a hermit or from Saudi Arabia. Am I right?

Not at all, I go out very regularly and as evidence by this thread I drink a lot as well. I'm a very extroverted person so it's difficult to "bother" me in that way - encountering people being loud, rowdy, singing etc make me feel happier, not annoyed. And I'm lucky enough never to have been attacked by anyone who was drunk or anything like that.

The most you could say that someone being drunk has 'bothered' me in my life was when I had a house party and everyone KOed in various beds such that the only place for me to sleep after everyone else had passed out was a kitchen chair. Sleeping while sitting up is somewhat uncomfortable but it's surprisingly doable and in my view it builds character, so I'd highly recommend everyone try it at least once.

Honestly though, in what way are you expecting me to say that people being drunk have bothered me? If you've been started on by some drunken idiot on a night out then that sucks and I feel bad for you, but surely you're not suggesting that everyone has been on the receiving end of this? I highly doubt I'm the only one who's never had violence directed towards him by a drunk O_o

No I think we should just focus on increasing the price of alcohol. That is what is important and it is what is being discussed here. Other things are for other threads.

So the concept of an analogy is lost on you then? I'm merely illustrating that it sounds more like your actual issue is with loud, extroverted people, not alcohol. Alcohol simply brings out those characteristics in people who would otherwise suppress them.

On prohibition, I would have no problem with that personally.

Figured as much. IMO, that kinda destroys the credibility of your argument, since it marks you out as a genuine puritan.

realitykeeper wrote: »

The advertising campaign against drink driving about ten years ago worked well.

What changed behaviours was a realistic risk of being caught.