Scotland Becomes the First Country to Enforce Minimum Pricing on Alcohol
Scotland has become the first country in the world to enforce a minimum price per unit of alcohol. As of 1 May 2018 all alcohol must cost no less than 0.5GPD or 50 pence.
The move is the result of a long process of research and conversations with the Scottish Parliament passing legislation in 2012, the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012, which allows the Scottish Ministers to introduce a system of Minimum Unit Pricing for alcohol. In October 2017 the law was passed by the UK Supreme Court.
Anyone licensed to sell alcohol will have to adhere to the new law - which means a price raise in bars, restaurants and in supermarkets and off licences. The more alcohol a drink contains, the stronger it is and therefore the more expensive it will be.
It is believed that the implementation of the law will help protect high risk drinkers who regularly drink more than the low risk drinking guidelines of 14 units of alcohol per week. This will see the end to cheap bottles of alcohol sold in community based shops - most pubs and other premises already sell alcohol above the minimum unit price.
This is part of a series of attempts to change the way people view alcohol in the UK with a 2016 move to adapt the guidelines around weekly guidelines. Recommended weekly limits of alcohol consumption were dropped from 21 for men and 14 for women to 14 units for the whole population. A change in language also came from the Chief Medical Officers at this time to replace the idea of "safe drinking limits" with "lower risk" drinking limits in the acknowledgement that no level of alcohol consumption was completely risk free.
In 2011 Scotland also passed legislation to ban special offers on alcohol such as happy hours and buy-one-get-one-free. This meant that any promotion on alcohol should last for at least three days to prevent cheaply available alcohol offers mainly attractive to higher risk drinkers and young people made through irresponsible promotions. These actions are set out to curb a trend in the falling price of alcohol - alcohol has become 60% more affordable than in 1980.
The new legislation sets Scotland further apart from the rest of the UK where licensing laws for the sale of alcohol differ. Legislators in Scotland have also curtailed the hours in which alcohol can be sold in shops limiting this to the hours between 10 am and 10 pm. In England alcohol can be sold 24 hours per day.
Scotland has the highest number of alcohol related deaths for its population compared to any other part of the UK. It is hoped that alcohol related deaths would fall by about 120 per year by year twenty of the policy and that there will be a fall in hospital admission of 2,000 per year by year twenty of the policy.
Guidelines are available for sellers of alcohol in a downloadable PDF document read more here.
