alcohol, violence and pikeys

[Moscow Mule]

I think it is more to do with attitude and am not sure that the price would be effective as a control.

I do have a vested interest I will admit because I do drink an unhealthy quantity of wine, but ....

I spent a weekend in Reykjavik recently and despite the fact that beer cost £6 per pint in the pub, I have never been to a place where there was such a mass collective mission to get truly drunk and disorderly on a Saturday night.

It is usual over there to stock up from the state controlled (and expensive) liquor shop (that closes at 6pm) and drink at home earlier in the evening. Then head out to the bars and clubs around 10pm - 11pm. The fact that the centre of Reykjavik is very compact helps concentrate all the action. Then they absolutely go for it until around 5am.

The authorities take it in their stride - the street cleaning machines all appear at 7am on the Sunday morning to clean up all the debris.

I was warned by a couple of locals that they do get a lot of trouble with drunken violence and that I should take care later on and watch out for people deliberately knocking into me to start a fight. But I didn't actually see any violence, just people completely incapacitated from the drink.

Going by that lesson, restricting the availability of wines and spirits, and raising the price of all alcohol, is not going to make the slightest bit of difference.

Perhaps alcohol should be reclassified as a class A substance because that works




Ah, I think I see what will happen if alcohol is made prohibitively expensive

All scandinavians are complete booze nutters. Especially the Finns - you will never see a more manic drunk .

[Churchill]

Well Churchill, clearly you don't have even the basic wit to argue with me.
So: Touche!

Not at all, just decided to meet some friends at t'pub.

You should try it some time.

[pisces]

Don't blame alcohol. It's just the accelerant of already existing disease.

[BoredBloke]

how about raising the drinking age to 21?

That's what I would do. At the moment young kids can get booze because a 16 year old can look like an 18 year old. However a 16 year old does not look like a 21 year old.

What I would also do is keep the pub age at 18.

In addition to this I would also bill the parents of the kids the equivalent amount it has cost in police man hours to deal with their little darling rather than just telling them off.

Increasing tax on booze would not stop kids drinking - they might drink less, but it wouldn't stop it - but since everybody would now have to pay more tax, I can't see the government resisting this one.