I don't think minimum pricing will help. As with all commercial products, the price only affects people who are on lower incomes - if you're rich you can drink yourself into oblivion as much as you like. If you have to budget all your wages, you will probably still drink around the same amount but pay more for it, just because there are people out there who can't control their drinking - and if people can't control their drinking habits then the price won't put them off either. I have two friends, both who receive top-rate DLA for being alcoholics (and two more for wanting too many drugs while we're at it, but thats OT probably) and have both said they'd probably make an effort to cut down their drinking if they didn't have so much "free money" to spend on it. They're alcoholics, and food and housing costs come further down the list of necessities than drink.
When I was a teenager, money was one of those things that I didn't think much of - I got it, I spent it, and it didn't matter how much something was. I didn't have other necessary things to spend money on so if alcohol was very expensive it probably wouldn't have crossed my mind that it was too dear, just that I might have to stop eating lunch at school or something
Maybe if a person is older and more mature and has other things to think about, they'll think twice about getting blocked every weekend if the extra cost is an issue, but it always seems that it's those people who are penalised for their rational thinking, rather than the people who don't care one way or the other about their health or finances.
Perhaps it might work better too if Debt wasn't so easily to get a hold of right now. If you've not enough money right now for your drink well then you can just go to one of those awful loan-shark-internet people and have money in 15 minutes, therefore keeping you as drunk as you like, getting you deeper into debt and putting that extra money into someone else's pocket, yet again. Thanks, British Goverment, you're just a Well of Brilliant Ideas.
Also, just to check, who gets this extra money? The alcohol producers, the retailers, or the goverment? If it is the producers then I'm not thrilled about the idea of a commercial company directly gaining from a new law on minimum pricing, ditto the retailers. The only positive thing I could think of from this is that the government could use the extra income from booze to actually provide education on alcohol and help in managaing themselves. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is society that has to change, not the price of alcohol - because that is not a fair method of dealing with it and won't solve the problem.
Anyway, why am I rambling about this
I only buy Buckfast now as a treat and even if the bottle was £20 I probably still would. So long as my cider production is never ending
