Minimum Unit Pricing has failed in every way, yet the Scottish Government continue to cling onto their anti-alcohol rhetoric.

Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) was implemented in 2018, with it initially costing 50p per unit of alcohol, rising to 65p at the end of October. Designed to reduce alcoholism, the policy is really just another SNP failure to add to the ever-growing list. Alcoholism remains rife in Scotland, with MUP serving less as a preventative, and more as a punishment for society’s most vulnerable. 

Since 2018, alcohol specific and related deaths have grown. That is a fact that the statistics could not spell out more clearly. Alcohol related hospital admissions appear to be down slightly since the introduction of MUP. This could be manipulated in many ways, but all that this data really shows is the failure of NHS Scotland, who are treating less patients today than before the pandemic. Alcohol related hospital admissions are down because all hospital admissions are too: NHS Scotland is on its knees, due to… another SNP failure! There appears to be a theme here. 

Many major news outlets, including the BBC, have claimed that Minimum Unit Pricing is working to reduce alcoholism. They do this by clever manipulation of the statistics. Scottish alcohol deaths are usually compared to England, and an estimate is created to suggest what alcohol deaths would have looked like without MUP. In other words, these numbers are pulled out of thin air.

While alcohol purchase may be down ever so slightly, Minimum Unit Pricing has clearly not done what it set out to achieve; so why has it been increased instead of axed?

MUP was brought into legislation as a sunset clause; if by April 2024 it had not worked, Parliament could vote to scrap it. It did not work. But instead of doing what is best for the country, the Government voted not only to extend the policy, but to increase it. MUP is not and has never been about reducing alcoholism.

It is true that Scotland has a deeply rooted history with alcoholism. But MUP has never been the way to fix this.

The SNP have always hated alcohol consumption. As soon as they came to power, plans were put into place to rid Scotland of its long standing pub culture. Then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described Minimum Unit Pricing as one of her “proudest achievements.” 

It is true that Scotland has a deeply rooted history with alcoholism. But MUP has never been the way to fix this. All that it has achieved is making poor people poorer. In 2022, Public Health Scotland found that the poorest sufferers of alcoholism experienced “increased financial strain”, and cut back on necessities such as food to pay for drink.  

To help alcoholics, more sophisticated plans and policies must be put in place. Minimum Unit Pricing instead punishes alcoholics, children of alcoholics, and predominantly people who just like a drink.

The biggest problem with the policy is that it assumes everyone in the economic system is a rational actor; any fool without so much as a National 5 in Business Studies can tell you that this isn't the case. As a student, I have found myself prioritising alcohol over food shopping or having the heating on, on more than one occasion since October. I’m willing to make sacrifices in order to maintain my drinking habits. And I am not an alcoholic, just an average student living on a budget, wishing to occasionally go out and have a few drinks and a bit of fun. To assume that someone suffering with genuine alcoholism will be deterred from buying and drinking alcohol just because of a rise in price is frankly idiotic. 

Minimum Unit Pricing is a complete failure. Next to the reversal of climate change goals or the terminal decline of schools, we begin to see a picture of Scotland and Scottish politics; something that could only be described as a laughing stock. 

Published 27 November 2024