What is the real cost?

A new report out claims that by increasing the minimum level of price for alcohol will save 800 lives per year.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/10/minimum-alcohol-pricing-save-860-lives-study


As usual the usual suspects come out of their academic woodwork to wave around how important their findings are. However how really do we know this. The same newspaper The Guardian carried another discussion about how people die in the UK


http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/oct/28/mortality-statistics-causes-death-england-wales-2010


In this piece we see that just short of 700 people died from alcohol related causes so where does this figure of 860 come from are we inventing deaths? Well no but it does highlight one major inconsistency in the idea of causal effects and death.

What is placed on the death certificate may be the cause of death but what caused the cause of death is far more important.

Some 150,000 people almost died of neoplasms and carcinoma and the same again for cardiovascular diseases so how many of these people would a minimum level of alcohol pricing actually save. That is because aren't these the people that Governments don't really want you to know about. In reality if only 860 deaths are to be saved from a total death count of half a million people what are we in reality talking about?

Yes you've guessed it George's coffers getting swelled again.

The reality of a minimum price is the reality of another stealth tax being placed upon the public and quite frankly the public have seen through it I think. Or at least I hope.

If any money raised from minimum cost per unit was used wisely and channelled into a solid education project then I for one would be a happy man. You see the billions raised from the alcohol industry in tax of one form or another just disappears into that murky pot at the Treasury ensuring that Uncle George doesn't have to put up direct taxation on all of us. If we seek to educate our children about the true cost of alcohol how many of those with chronic and debilitating illnesses could be prevented from getting those illnesses? Quite a substantial more than 860 I would guess. I would add maybe 50 times more than the 860.

Education does not need to be boring or painful to achieve this. With the thousands of people I have worked with on education projects I have seen people change habits sufficiently in a short time to make a difference. That is through powerful education.

My father would still have died had minimum pricing been around in the 1980s or 90s. He managed to, and forgive me this, piss £60,000 against a wall in less than six months which is quite a feat given that his staple diet was a mere three bottles of scotch or vodka per night.

So all in all I have this to say to those who would study booze and it's ill effects.

Come and see what it's like in the trenches because as usual the Generals are looking the wrong way as we deal with the mess that is made by half baked twits in suits looking to make a name.