A report highly critical of the Government's alcohol strategy was published quietly the same day that a ban on the recreational drug mephedrone was recommended.Heh..! Professor Nutt is learning that when you are on the outs with the government, you are really on the outs.
For ‘twas he who helped write this latest missive from the People Who Know Best:
Changes are proposed in the report by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), which also accuses ministers of being insufficiently "pro-active" in their efforts to curb excessive drinking.And what do the boffins suggest?
The report says pubs and restaurants should use a standard measure, so drinks contain similar amounts of alcohol. Instead of measuring drinks in terms of volume – a "large" or "small" glass of wine – they should be measured in units of alcohol, so customers understand how much they are drinking.Do they really think the people that cause the problems associated with ‘problem drinking’ will care..?
The report was submitted nine months ago but published only on 29 March, after the council issued its recommendation for the ban on mephedrone. It was ignored due to the outcry surrounding the drug.That’s a pity.
It should be ignored because it’s yet more useless, nannying, hectoring, pointless crap, designed to ‘denormalise’ a normal activity for the vast majority of people by riding on the back of the problems created by the minority.
Strong beers and lagers should attract higher taxes and a ban on drinking games in colleges and universities should be considered, the report says. A lower blood alcohol limit should also be imposed for drivers under 25 because of their high accident rate, it adds.*sigh*
The proposal to switch from measures of volume to measures of alcohol is aimed to halt the trend of serving wine in larger glasses. The report says: "Nowadays, even a small glass of wine represents a large quantity of alcohol, and this encourages ever greater quantities of alcohol to be consumed."Oh, why not? That business of messing around with the container worked so well with salt cellars, didn’t it?
Isn’t it about time we gave up on trying to socially engineer our way out of problems? The problem is, at heart, never, ever the item/vehicle/substance itself, but the people that are bound and determined to use/abuse it.
After all, as Tim Worstall points out, the latest government edict has had absolutely no effect whatsoever. In fact, it appears to have made the forbidden fruit even more attractive...
You can always tell how many "units of alcohol" you've had by how fast the room is spinning round.
ReplyDeleteBesides, I don't know about the rest of your readers, but I don't drink alcohol. I drink beer. Only temperance fanatics are unable to tell the difference.
ReplyDeleteAh but the drunk yob that bravely announces the big I am before causing chaos and carnage all around couldn't possibly be the problem. They don't even have a cause just mindless blathering, at least the Mods and Rockers found a quiet corner of a beach somewhere to kick seven shades of shite out of each other.
ReplyDeleteYes Julia most do occasionally get right out of it and the company they are in find some way of getting them home, after a few hours the feelings of stupidity and embarrassment follow. It really doesn't matter how someone gets mullered its their actions on these occasions, what their 'friends' do and how they react when sober.
There was a reasonable effort recently on TV showing people throwing up and smashing stuff up before they go out.
as for the alleged dangers of drugs, no real conclusions can be drawn when people are taking unknown quantities of a mixture of unknown substances in a unknown physical state and in a biologically challenging environment. Again blaming the individual drugs identified is stupid as largely completely separate factors have the greatest personal risk attached to them. In fact most of the substances recently identified as dangerous would be particularly difficult to knowingly cause self harm with in one sitting, the effects of most of them get to a point where the individual would be incapacitated before consuming enough to realise life threatening toxicity, there are however some particularly determined people out there.
ReplyDeletePrevention is always better than cure and to be thinking along those lines is commendable. However it becomes farcical when prevention is aimed at the symptoms rather than the cause. The cause in this case is the level of standards and values of society and currently they are lower than a snakes belly.
ReplyDeletePeople drink too much and behave badly because they have no sense of personal or social responsibility and do not fear the consequences. That has been taken away from them by the state reverse that and you will reverse behaviour.
<moonbat>
ReplyDeleteOnce again Julia you are wrong.
All the problem drinking is caused by people drinking wine.
People who drink pints of beer never get into trouble.
</moonbat>
exactly Anti, the yobs sense of individual and social responsibility is the cause not the drugs and or alcohol. That is just a symptom as are the effects of the behaviour. People have been taking intoxicants ad infinitum but their behaviour both under the influence and without a shoddy excuse has varied as has the effects of their behaviour on the society they live amongst, precisely because people learn what they can get away with. The very fact that the derangement of the senses has led to some of humanities’ most dramatic and influential artistic efforts and scientific discoveries is proof positive that chemicals have no emotion they mealy facilitate the expression of a person's emotion. Who honestly cares if someone wants to privately chemically alter reality or if a bunch of yobs want to kick shite out of each other again while we can continue doing whatever it is we want to do unaffected. The police and town and city centre bars have given over the location to these yobs, frankly if they were just moved on to carry on somewhere socially inconsequential that would be just fine.
ReplyDeleteIf people believed they could not get away with walking around in public in a chemically induced state without being picked up and locked up they'd still do it just without affecting the rest of us, prohibition. Problem solved for those who don't want to experience this behaviour. If no booze or drugs existed for sale people would just make it, eg boot hooch in prison. Its far easier to affect what people do to each other than it is to control what we do to ourselves.
ReplyDelete"It really doesn't matter how someone gets mullered its their actions on these occasions, what their 'friends' do and how they react when sober."
ReplyDeleteIndeed. None of that affected by any new legislation.
"People drink too much and behave badly because they have no sense of personal or social responsibility and do not fear the consequences."
I agree with you, but that should be 'Some people'...
"The police and town and city centre bars have given over the location to these yobs, frankly if they were just moved on to carry on somewhere socially inconsequential that would be just fine."
Or if the law was applied to them as it used to be...
How exactly would drinking games be banned in universities? Call 999 when a bunch of silly sods sit down and start a Boat Race? Christ alive, the standard punishment for infraction of the rules at a college dinner when I were a lad was the necking of a pint without drawing breath (you could take a forfeit for a lady, and I did). Big transgressions were punished by draining the three-handled pot, which was close to half a gallon. The Rugby blokes would get through several yards of ale a night in the Union Bar. There was actual sawdust on the floor. I'm glad to say that I was drunk many, many times at university (and since). The last time I threw up from booze was Freshers' Week in 1989, when I was (barely) 20 years old. I know what I am doing - it may not be 100% heathy, but it's my body and my life and above all, my choice. I do not need some pasty-faced killjoy PPE graduate telling me what, and how much, intoxicating substances I can introduce into my body.
ReplyDelete