Jeremy Beadles on banning cheap alcohol

Justice minister Kenny MacAskill's announcements on Wednesday that he wanted to ban price promotions on alcohol and limit where shops could display drinks were disappointing but not surprising. The Scottish government has joined the chorus of well-meaning but misguided people who believe that when it comes to alcohol misuse, the solution lies solely in price and availability.

Alcohol is usually quite high on the political and media agenda, but this summer has been something else. Hardly a day has gone by without an alcohol-based headline. But it almost seems as though people aren't reading to the end of the stories. Let me give you one "binge-drink" headline that missed the point this week: A report in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health concluded that teen binge drinkers are significantly more likely to become heavy drinkers as adults and find themselves with a string of criminal convictions. But the report actually urged policymakers to look beyond alcohol use, access and availability and to focus on the "wider context of adolescent risk behaviour".

We have a long cultural history of alcohol misuse in this country and it is far too simplistic to say "price + availability = alcohol misuse". The evidence for this is on our doorstep. In the UK, we already have some of the highest alcohol taxes in Europe and pay £1.33 on a bottle of wine, compared to 2p in France and no tax in Italy, Portugal and Spain. In these countries alcohol is much cheaper but they don't have the same drinking problems. In contrast, Sweden and Finland, with higher prices, have similar problems.

By focusing on price and availability, Mr MacAskill has missed opportunities to help solve the wider problems of alcohol misuse. Banning promotional models will cause considerable competition distortion in the UK market. This will be keenly felt in the border areas where Scots will be able to look over to England and Northern Ireland for promotional offers. Will Carlisle become to the Scots what Calais is to the English? It will be interesting to see the reaction of the UK government and to watch how these proposals fit within European Competition law.

So, what is the solution? Well, it may sound trite, but I believe that it's about society. Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus recently said that a change in drinking culture would only happen if the whole of society got involved.

It's about working out why people want to drink lots in order to get drunk. We should make better use of all the education and information routes. Parents, schools, the government, the media, medics and the industry all have a role to play in educating and informing consumers.

There are some good statistics in MacAskill's speech but here are a few others: The amount we drink has fallen by 5% in the last two years; the average weekly alcohol consumption for men has dropped consistently since 1998; for women, consumption rose from 1998 to 2002 and has now gone back down to circa 1998 levels; in 2005 fewer people aged between 16 and 24 said they drank more than the recommended daily alcohol levels compared with 2002.

This doesn't mean everything is rosy, but the government should be looking at what it can do to actually tackle the problems rather than blaming the industry.