Study: Scotland’s minimum pricing linked to 13% drop in alcohol-related deaths

I don't see a link to the study (an unforgivable oversight in every case) but it's a good call out to consider the pandemic when we're talking about those years. There was a solid decade of people brutally abusing data from around the Great Recession without calling out that everything was absolutely bonkers due to the Great Recession. It'll be even worse with data around the pandemic years because people would rather score their points than just be fucking honest.

No true scotsman will bootleg.

Heard much the same about weed; often cheaper to buy from a local, uh, "specialist" than get nailed for higher taxes at retailers.

20 years ago your local specialist was had a lot of risk, too. Cops, guns, general shadiness, etc. Now most cops DGAF for anything under giant quantities, and even then it's a regulatory thing, so they're not tracking down the local weedman. No risk, and better prices.

Tobacco in Canada is a complex subject. While I agree the infamously high prices of cigarettes in Canada go into play, I would argue that tax exempt cigarettes quotas in reserves[0] and the overall lack of oversight in Reserves creates a perfect haven for contraband, distribution of tax-free cigarettes and "indian smokes".

its sad how the Indian Act is still in effect today and how politically impossible the situation is.

I think that countries without these huge loopholes might see less problems from bootlegging as we see here.

0:https://www.ontario.ca/document/tobacco-tax/first-nations-ci...

Don't really have any data to base this thought on, but it seems like there could be a (positive?) feedback loop - at least from the standpoint of legal players within a heavily taxed industry - where if high taxes were then used to prevent illegal players (bootleggers/smuggling) from entering the market of enforcing the existing laws.

That way instead of general tax payers funding enforcement, it's the direct beneficiaries of the enforcement who are funding the effort. And they can decide how much they want to tax themselves.

I’m super sceptical about price being a barrier to alcohol consumption. It’s simply too ubiquitous.

My dad, born in the 50s in northern France says that near beer was more ubiquitous for kids than water when he was growing up. Part of it was that the ever so slight fermentation of even near beer made it safer to drink than water from who knew where. I never checked the validity of this story, but it's fun to think about. It doesn't really surprise me though that cheap beer would be cheaper than mineral water brands, most of their costs have to be bottling and transport and marketing. The product itself, is probably one of the cheaper parts.

I truly struggle (in the US) to find 12oz glass-bottled sparkling water that's cheaper than some beers sold in 12oz glass bottles. One might think the glass is making it expensive, due to the weight, but then why are some beers in glass cheaper? It seems like, at worst, non-famous sparkling water ought to cost slightly less than the beer does, but it's typically about the same or a little higher, something like $1.15 or $1.20 per bottle purchased in quantities of 15 (and more like $2 or more purchased in singles!)

(why not buy larger bottles? I prefer small ones because I don't always want to drink an entire 750ml of fizzy water in a single day, and it goes flat if left overnight; I do buy plastic sometimes but the discount over glass is so tiny that it's not really meaningful, and I prefer glass, both due to vague uneasiness with plastic and because if I end up drinking out of the bottle rather than a cup, glass bottles feel nicer than plastic)

> even cheaper than some mineral water brands.

That seems like a poor comparison to make the point, since bottled mineral water is notoriously overpriced, particularly the "high end" brands.

How does it compare to something with relatively standard prices like milk? In the US, particularly cheap beer for broke alcoholics might be $5 for a sixpack of cans, 2.1 L or approximately $2.5 per liter. Milk is something like $4 per gallon, or about $1.10 per liter. Much cheaper than the cheapest beer.

Light beer and wine have been preferable drinks if not life-savers even for minors in most of Europe since at least medieval times because of the antibiotic/sterilizing effect compared to tap water.

Which is probably the end which experiences the most harm from alcoholism and alcohol poisoning if I had to guess

We've got something similar in Ireland, Alcohol min price is 10c/ml.

Subjectively, It's wiped out bottles of wine < 8 eur, pushed Guinness can prices up about 25%, and dropped the sizes of cheap ass spirits from 750/40% to 500/37.5% at the same 15 eur price point. (this at Lidl, which is always a low price consistent enough quality). IPAs and other high proof beers are starting to come in smaller cans so they're not more than 2eur each. I never paid attention to the 2l strong cider, but I think that was a primary target.

Up north, just over the border, you can get 1L Bacardi 40% for about 20£. In France, the 3 eur wine can be ok, and rum is damn cheap, to the point in coming in 3L boxes. There are tetra-pack wines in Spain at 1 eur(absolute crap, but distill well). And then there are the 3l/10Eur jugs of Tokaji Furmint in Hungary (ok, and distills very well).

That might be plausible if the study was counting alcohol sales, but this is counting deaths.

Do you have any reason to believe that or do you just disbelieve positive results on principle?

The article says 150 fewer deaths. So about 1150 deaths a year down to 1000 deaths per year. But I too would be interested to see the other causes of death during that time, especially what controls were put in place given most of this study would have taken place during the pandemic.

Conservatives bitch and moan about people on food stamps buying junk food all the damn time, but don't actually want to do anything about it because a sizeable portion of their base is on food stamps and likes junk food and would be upset if they actually put restrictions on it. Also foodstamps are meant to be a handout to farmers and food producers anyway so limiting purchases might go against that goal.

one would imagine that a price floor of £5 for a 2L (4.5 pints) bottle of cider wouldn't prevent many people from being able to purchase it to literally save their life. It would however, help people think twice about going through multiple of them a day?

I am usually quite sympathetic to the plight of addicts and the poor regulation and political environment around it but having lived in the UK for years ive only really heard good stuff about this. It's really not a high price point, it cuts out the really nasty stuff only.