Time to address root causes of alcohol problems
The biggest threat to our trade is the growth of restrictive regulation from government. The new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government is almost certainly moving licensing from the Department of Culture back to the Home Office, signalling an even tougher regulatory approach.
So, we can expect that the politics of drinking will continue to be characterised by scape-goating and blame, with the politicians seeking ever-more restrictive legislation to curb 'irresponsible licensees'.
I'm tempted to say that we need a sound-bite to counter this tired and misinformed approach, something like: 'Tough on alcohol abuse, tough on the causes of alcohol abuse' comes to mind.
The fact is that politicians like to pretend that the causes of alcohol abuse are located in the retail distribution system and the way in which that system handles the product. They want to ignore the underlying causes of problem drinking because they map across directly to political failure.
The BMA and the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) believes in the 'whole population' approach to reducing alcohol-related harms. The basic idea is that a significant reduction in alcohol consumption across the whole population raises the general health of that population.
This is the ideological approach to alcohol harm-reduction that drives the belief in government that alcohol abuse can be tackled effectively by tough, restrictive regulation. As journalist Phil Mellows has pointed out, whilst excessive consumption of alcohol is not the prerogative of any one social group, alcohol-related hospital admissions are massively skewed towards the poor and disadvantaged.
Poverty and high-risk drinking cultures are closely linked; so is chronic drinking (what we used to call alcoholism) and depressive illness. This is what gives the lie to the neo-prohibitionist ideology of Medical Temperance and the AHA. Our industry needs to counter this false, ideological approach and provide an alternative analysis and a different narrative.
Alcohol abuse is both a 'class thing' and a 'cultural thing'. The two are closely linked. A rough and ready definition of culture might be: 'Culture is what you and me get up to round here.' If 'round here' is a socially deprived inner-city area with high levels of unemployment, poverty and social blight, then the drinking culture of 'you and me' - the locals - is likely to be high-risk, drinking-to-get-drunk in dodgy pubs or peoples' flats in the early hours of the morning.
If 'round here' is a prosperous area with up-market pubs, bars and restaurants then the drinking culture is more likely to reflect social drinking norms, low risk behaviour and the drinking of alcohol to accompany food. How do the simplistic nostrums of the 'whole population' approach address problem drinking when the underlying causes and cultural differences are as complex as this?
Take another example: chronic drinking amongst the elderly poor. This is a growing problem. Its root causes are not to be found in how alcohol is retailed, or in price and availability. In a society in which people aged over 55 are now more numerous than those aged under 25, the growing social isolation of the elderly needs to be addressed. Depressive illnesses are more common in elderly people; this in turn is reflected in the incidence of chronic drinking in this age group. Again, how does restrictive regulation even begin to address this?
Nobody would argue that alcohol retailing should be regulation-free, but our industry must begin to articulate a more sophisticated intellectual position than it has managed to do up to now.
Unless we can build a constituency of support for that position beyond our own sector, then we leave a vacuum that will continue to be filled by the insidious ideology of those whose barely hidden agenda is creeping prohibition.
• Visit www.cpltraining.co.uk to read more blogs on the same subject.
Paul Chase is a Director and Head of UK Compliance at CPL Training, and has carried out extensive historical research into the UK and American temperance movements and their contemporary inheritors.
