Drink dilemma
I notice Shona Robinson is urging the drinks industry chiefs to stop their opposition to minimum alcohol pricing in Scotland (Your report, 26 October).
Assuming she is successful, I wonder how the Scottish Government is going to handle the following possible scenarios that could combine to greatly diminish the impact of the legislation.
Web sites will increase, legally based in England offering low-cost booze prepaid and shipped to buyer addresses or convenient collection points in Scotland.
The big supermarkets and Amazon and the like all have, or can quickly create, such distribution systems.
Entrepreneurs and current businesses (including supermarkets) could build shops near the M6 in the Carlisle area and on the A1 at Berwick on Tweed as well as near the A697 at Cornhill on Tweed.
Here white van drivers as well as trucks and private cars can load up with plentiful low cost booze.
How will this behaviour be restrained, as surely this is legal and cannot be interfered with by the Scottish Government and its agencies?
Then there is the issue of entrepreneurs seeing an opportunity to visit housing schemes and “peddle” cheap booze, as for some popular drinks, the price will double in Scotland, as quoted in The Scotsman.
Even including transport, there should still be a worthwhile margin left for the middlemen.
Is this legal? If not, what burdens will this put on the police, as if they do not have enough to contend with already?
Perhaps Shona Robinson