The Scottish Government, on the other hand, thinks that there is a single solution, a quick fix, minimum pricing. It is also easy, because it will cost the Government next to nothing, merely batting the ball into someone else's court.

Mr Lochhead, in the same issue ("MSP insists whisky firms not target in booze battle"), declares that "access to cheap ciders, wines and lagers on our local supermarket shelves are at the heart of the problem". The Government wants us to believe this because it fits their "solution". But it is nonsense.

The real problem is that there is not a single problem. Pricing cheap drink out of the market for pre-pub age teenagers who like to gather in impromptu shebeens might work, as a kind of prohibition-lite for this age-group; and here I agree with Mr Lochhead that this kind of behaviour may be a "route" into binge-drinking, the same kind of "gateway" argument used in connection with other drugs.

However, a couple of likely lads or lassies setting up for a night on the town are not going to be deterred by minimum pricing from blowing a couple of hours' wages on a bottle of vodka and a dozen tinnies as an amuse-bouche.

The public drunkenness, street disorder, violence, and mayhem in A&E that may well follow is the second problem, widely perceived as the main one. Most Press and TV pieces on what you call the "scourge on society" are illustrated with boys displaying their prowess by fighting in the street, and girls displaying their knickers by throwing up in the gutter.

Then, the third problem: those who - despite the propaganda, despite police vigilance, despite ever more Draconian penalties, despite public odium, despite the risk to themselves and innocent members of the public - drink and drive.

And finally, the truly low-profile problem, the picture nobody sees, nobody wants to see, the liver-damaged alcoholic wreck in a no-hopers' ward in an NHS hospital, often by way of domestic violence, loss of livelihood, broken relationships, with all the hurt and pain you so eloquently refer to in your editorial.

As you say in conclusion: "More radical measures are certainly required..." Here are some suggestions, and they are all expensive:

Better supervision of, and provision for, at-risk teenagers; more policing on the streets and in A&E departments; closer regulation of licensed premises, and proper training for staff; recognition by the courts that drunkenness is an aggravating, not extenuating, circumstance; an alcohol offenders' register, along the lines of that for sexual offenders; early intervention on problem drinkers by social services; expanded provision for alcohol counselling and rehabilitation, in and out of prison.

Where's the money to come from? I don't know. Not my remit, thank goodness. But I do know that pussyfooting about with sticking-plaster remedies like minimum pricing is going nowhere. The watchword must be: "Target the drinker, not the drink."

If we are not prepared to pay the price for real solutions to the Scottish Problem, then we should be honest enough to welcome travellers to our neck of the woods with signs that read: "Moray, The Booze Country". – Yours etc,

David F. Sangster, The Cottage, Cloves, Forres.

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend

Bookmark this

---