Tories Hopeless Battle against Binge Drinking Britain

So election time is fast approaching and with it comes more ambitious promises from the Tories to fix the seemingly unfixable broken Britain.

My favourite one this week was the pledge to crackdown on binge drinking. The Tories are proposing to increase the tax on alcopops and super-strength lager in effort to crackdown on "drink fuelled louts" as The Sun so delicately puts it. Therefore, under the new proposals a four-pack of strong lager would rise by £1.33.



Now maybe I'm just being facetious, but can you really see four semi-pissed individuals getting ready to hit the town, walking in to an off license and picking up a 4 pack of 9% Tennants Super Lager and then suddenly having a moment of clarity and deciding maybe they shouldn't buy this product. Maybe they should call it a day and go and get an early night as tomorrow will bring a busy day of being a good citizen and helping the local community. All because of the extra £1.33 extra they didn't spent the night before?

Basically, my incoherent and somewhat rambling point here is that people will always drink irresponsibly, there is no point punishing the millions of individuals who like to go out, have a few drinks of whatever they chose and have a good time. All this will mean is people who drink ten cans of lager before a night out will now only be able to drink eight.

Over the years binge drinking has become embedded into the British culture and a relatively minor tax hike on a few products certainly isn't going to change that any time soon. Let be honest, even if it did, people will just drink something else.