Strict alcohol limits punishing sensible drinkers among us

THE other day, I popped into a Dundee bar, having spotted a familiar face through the window — an old manager I worked for in my late teens.

I still remember his raised eyebrow at my first attempt at pulling a pint, ratio 2:1 froth to lager and his quip: “Got a cone to go with that?’

He perked up for a few minutes when I came in, smiling and reminiscing but then slouched over the bar.

“Look,” he said, motioning around the pub. “A few years ago, this place would have been mobbed. Well, at least not empty. Lunchtime now? It’s like the Marie Celeste.”

Since the reduction in the driving alcohol limit to almost zero, this landlord says the effect on business has been brutal. He’s lost customers who would nurse a pint for the duration of a football game before driving home.

It was their time, he said, to get away from it all — the wife, kids, whatever was going on in their lives — for an hour or so. Nursing a diet cola didn’t hold the same appeal.

Others would sip a half-pint over scampi and chips but now don’t see the point. There was something special about a pint in a pub.

And yet, he said: “I heard about a guy the other day done for being nine times over the limit and he’s in the same camp as someone who has a pint?

“No wonder people have been scared off the pub. They just open a can at home. They might not speak to anyone but at least they get a beer.”

It goes without saying that if cutting the legal limit saves one life, it’s worth it. But is this really the way to do it — punishing sensible drinkers, taking away a small pleasure in a sociable environment?

Scotland has also led the way in advising pregnant women to drink no alcohol.

Yet the majority of women I know covet that glass or two a week — getting them through a night out where everyone is so drunk it sounds like they’re speaking a foreign language, or just a Saturday night treat at home watching I’m a Celebrity.

Speak to women who carried children a generation or two ago and they’ll tell you how there was no such guidance in place. One woman told me she had “several” Bacardis and cigarettes just before she went into labour.

No one’s saying we should return to those days — we now know so much more and the baby is what comes first.

But making women feel bad about a weekly unit or two. Is that really the way forward? I’ve even heard mums-to-be say this feels like a prohibition and is more likely to make them drink in secret.

We should be applauded for taking the lead in most matters but surely there are more pressing things to tackle than those who drank moderately in the first place.