Really Stupid Ideas #1

[drplokta]

First in an occasional series pointing out why ideas that are under discussion are stupid.

Today, we look at setting a minimum price per unit for alcohol. This is a stupid idea because it immediately turns (formerly) cheap booze into a massively profitable line for the supermarkets, with no price competition to worry about. This means that they will spend tens of millions promoting it, and sales may even increase.

The smart thing to do instead is to increase tax, bring tax levels more into line with alcohol content, and perhaps prohibit selling alcohol at below cost price as the government is proposing (although this, while not actively stupid, is very difficult since the government has no way to find out what cost price is).

Comments

[andrewducker]

Not to mention that minimum pricing is probably against EU law.

And yes, does that mean that a company can't sell alcohol wholesale for less than they bought it for? That makes "going out of business" sales tricky.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Also, there is alcohol in a lot of products that aren't usually used to get drunk on. Would this cause the price of toothpaste, cooking wine and 100 other random products to skyrocket as well?

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Toothpaste?

Now mouthwash, yes.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Signal tooth paste in the United States has alcohol in it.

I only know this because about 15 years ago some school teachers had the brilliant idea to brethalyze every single student who came to the prom under the threat that anyone to blew positive for booze would not be welcome at graduation.

10 girls who were later able to prove they had not been drinking at all - but had simply brushed their teeth right before getting in the limo were excluded from graduation, sued the school and got a shitfuck of money.

Mostly because the school released their names to local newspapers and did everything they could to hurt their reputations.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

So we're looking at something with a high enough alcohol content to be detectable in the mouth immediately after use, when explicitly looked for by a bunch of shitheads.

That's a pretty low content threshold. Having just checked a mouthwash (alcohol content clearly signalled) and toothpaste (not mentioned), I think you'd find the effect on toothpaste per se would be negligible. I've also not noticed any special toothpastes on sale at Muslim grocers.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Mouthwash is also mildly alcoholic, IIRC.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Which they clearly signal on the contents.

(There are alcohol-free ones, but Listerine lists alcohol as a major ingredient. After that mysterious aqua stuff.)

A dose of mouthwash is also considerably larger than a dose of toothpaste, which also means that the mouthwash manufacturers would have a much bigger problem than the toothpaste ones.

(Well, assuming they're not the same people.)

I wonder if those girls had actually had used a mouthwash after brushing their teeth. That would much more plausible to me, but without a citation, it's difficult to know.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

I wonder if those girls had actually had used a mouthwash after brushing their teeth.

That had certainly occurred to me.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

A quick look around indicates that there is a fairly common alcohol in toothpaste after all - sorbitol (an artificial sweetener). It isn't ethanol, but it might have been that that showed positive in the tests, depending on how exactly those tests worked.

(I think we may assume that any alcohol tax won't be targetting sorbitol.)

[armb.livejournal.com]

The worst case is possibly that products where the alcohol can't safely be drunk won't go up in price, and alcoholics will be more likely to drink it anyway than if cheap drinking alcohol was available. (Mouthwash, cologne, methylated spirits, etc.)