How a minimum unit price for alcohol was scuppered
BMJ 2014; 348 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g23 (Published 08 January 2014) Cite this as: BMJ 2014;348:g23
All rapid responses
I appreciate the anger of the authors. However, apart from teenage experimenters, I believe (without statistical evidence), that people become hooked because alcohol helps them feel less miserable. Altered consciousness. If they could be helped to become less miserable, more free from pain, physical or mental, they would not need this prop, nor the prop of tobacco or other drugs or prescribed medicines (analgesics, hypnotics, etc ). Doctors often moan about patients wanting such drugs. If the NHS were to relieve physical pain, the patients would not need analgesics.
Relief of mental pain is much more difficult: it needs, sometimes, an appreciation by us, the commoners (plebs?) that our lords and masters will have the best of the roast, and we should be content with the bones and gristle. Of course if the lords and masters were a little less shrill about being all of us together, and a little more modest in their life styles........the commoners would be less envious, more content, less prone to rages against the world.
My appreciation of the battle scene may be wrong. I would welcome corrections.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Gilmore and Daube are rightly concerned by the scuppering of a minimum unit price for alcohol.(1) However their analysis deserves comments.
Pointing out “parallels with tobacco companies, which still resist public health action through lobbying, public relations, …” is burying one's head in the sand. The burden of tobacco and alcohol on health and society is so high, and the evidence of the efficacy of various actions for control is so strong, that the present inertia cannot be explained by lobbying but only by gross corruption.
Pledging for “an alcohol equivalent to the UN Framework Convention for Tobacco Control” is surprising.
Indeed, first, the UN is enduringly falling to shame countries into better compliance convention despite repeated serious breaches(2,3) Second, in 2009 the UN did not help little Uruguay (GDP $31 billion) when it was sued before the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes by the giant Philip Morris ($25 billion in total revenues for a market capitalization of $95 billion) for the increase in the size of health warnings from 50% of the total pack size to 80%.(4,5) Third, in the UK which has ratified the Convention, the prevalence of smoking is not lower than in the US which has not. The Convention is a useless scrap of paper, at best, if not a smoke screen.
A Framework Convention for Alcohol Control would just be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Neither naivety nor hope can yield results. Errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum (to err is human, but to persist in the mistake is diabolical).
1 Gilmore I, Daube M. How a minimum unit price for alcohol was scuppered. BMJ 2014;348:g23.
2 Braillon A, Dubois G. Framework convention on tobacco control... in search of outcomes. The responsibility to protect. Health Policy 2011;103:98-9.
3 Braillon A, Dubois G. Tobacco control: up in smoke in Europe? Addiction. 2012;107:1016-7
4 Fooks G, Gilmore AB. International trade law, plain packaging and tobacco industry political activity: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Tob Control 2014;23:e1.
5 Braillon A, Dubois G. Warnings on tobacco packets. Is your MP concerned about public health? BMJ 2011;343:d4883.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: How a minimum unit price for alcohol was scuppered
It was disappointing to see the BMJ asking in its poll the question 'Would minimum unit pricing for alcohol save lives?' BMj 2014;348:f7646
The majority answer of no is at very least unscientific and certainly unhelpful. The answer is we do not know but the evidence points to a reduction of intake and thus the encouraging prospect that lives will be saved.
Competing interests: No competing interests