{"id":6101,"date":"2012-11-29T09:15:50","date_gmt":"2012-11-29T09:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=6101"},"modified":"2012-11-29T09:15:50","modified_gmt":"2012-11-29T09:15:50","slug":"minimum-unit-pricing-for-alcohol-whats-the-downside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/minimum-unit-pricing-for-alcohol-whats-the-downside","title":{"rendered":"Minimum Unit Pricing for alcohol: what&#8217;s the downside?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/health-20515918\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6113\" title=\"Fullscreen capture 28112012 123647\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Fullscreen-capture-28112012-123647.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Fullscreen-capture-28112012-123647.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Fullscreen-capture-28112012-123647-300x180.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Fullscreen-capture-28112012-123647-150x90.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Fullscreen-capture-28112012-123647-400x240.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The UK is considering <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/health-20515918\" target=\"_blank\">Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) of alcohol<\/a>, with an initial level of 45 p per unit.<\/p>\n<p>Initially, I couldn&#8217;t see a downside, from the perspective of a wine lover. It would make the cheapest bottle of wine \u00a34.22 according to the BBC News story linked above. In Scotland, where a MUP of 50 p is being considered, a bottle will cost at least \u00a34.88.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a tax, so producers and retailers will benefit from the increased price, although they may also lose some sales.<\/p>\n<p>And it would\u00a0(hopefully) wipe off the shelves some of the more repellent\u00a0drinks whose objective seems to be to deliver as much alcohol as possible for\u00a0very little money. My experience with teenagers is that they are drawn to the likes of K Cider, which is \u00a31 a can from the corner shop and 10% alcohol.<\/p>\n<p>But after discussing the topic\u00a0on <em>Twitter<\/em> and <em>Facebook<\/em>, I&#8217;ve heard some good arguments why\u00a0MUP might be a bad idea. There will probably be unintended consequences, and generally speaking government\u00a0intervention in markets\u00a0is undesirable. It may also be illegal.<\/p>\n<p>It does seem, though, that raising the price of alcohol\u00a0saves lives (for example, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/lancet\/article\/PIIS0140-6736(10)60058-X\/fulltext\" target=\"_blank\">this study in The Lancet<\/a>).\u00a0This is what is driving MUP, and may see it succeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The UK is considering Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) of alcohol, with an initial level of 45 p per unit. Initially, I couldn&#8217;t see a downside, from the perspective of a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6101"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6114,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6101\/revisions\/6114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}