6,000 have died during the five- year wait for minimum unit pricing

The Scotch Whisky Association has behaved disgracefully in its campaign to try and prevent the Scottish Government’s minimum pricing policy, writes Dr Eric Carlin

So the UK Supreme Court has now confirmed what health advocates, including SHAAP ( Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems), Alcohol Focus Scotland, the BMA and the Scottish Government have known and asserted for up to ten years, that combating alcohol- related mortality and hospitalisation has to be a priority in Scotland and that minimum pricing ‘ is proportionate in the sense required by the European Union’. Five years after the legislation was passed unopposed in the Scottish Parliament, at last the road is clear of legal challenges and the policy, recognised by almost all health professionals and the World Health Organisation as a policy ‘ Best Buy’ to tackle and reduce alcohol- related harms can at last be implemented. With typical arrogance, the Scotch Whisky Association ( SWA) chief executive, states on their website that ‘ We accept the Supreme Court’s ruling on minimum unit pricing ( MUP) of alcohol in Scotland.’ How generous of them.

Ordinary people have seen through the deceit of the SWA, which has given the impression, through a fiveyear period when 6,000 Scots have died from alcohol- related causes, that its actions have been to protect the ‘ highquality, much- loved and prestigious spirit drink with a global reputation’ described on the SWA’S website, rather than the cheap vodkas that MUP mainly affects. It’s a remark that contrasts with the good sense and morality of the majority of Scots, who know that putting a few pence onto their favourite tipple, as a side- effect of the MUP policy, is worthwhile if we can reduce the pain and suffering that they feel when 24 family members, friends, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, partners, are dying every week, due to alcoholrelated harm.

It’s difficult to imagine how the SWA will ever be regarded as it claims to be, as a ‘ trusted voice in the debate on alcohol and society’. The only debate that they have been engaged in on MUP has been how to overturn the democratic will of the Scottish people, who voted the SNP into government in 2012, with MUP in its manifesto. Aside from that, they and their backers have lied and misled, to tr y to ensure that no precedent would be set that might impact on their capacity to produce and distribute alcoholic beverages that are cheap to produce and to sell on to vulnerable people in Scotland and overseas.

Many industry opponents to MUP have misrepresented health campaigners, such as myself, as health fascists. Principled politicians have been maligned as ‘ nanny state’ meddlers. In fact, if you check your history, you will find that campaigning against alcohol is a perfectly legitimate and reasonable position and that many of the founders of the Labour party, including Keir Hardie, were closely linked with the Temperance movement. They saw the harms that alcohol was causing in their communities and the links with poverty and they took a principled stance to tr y to improve the situation.

However, the contemporary battle on MUP has never been a battle against alcohol or against the alcohol industry. It has been a battle to reduce the harms caused by cheap booze, produced and marketed to the most vulnerable in our society.

Rather than relying on such people to ‘ drink responsibly’, the Scottish Government has recognised its moral duty to intervene to regulate the market in order to reduce health inequalities. Next step, I hope, action on alcohol advertising. # Mupsaveslives ● Dr Eric Carlin is the director of SHAAP - Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems

Principled politicians have been maligned as ‘ nanny state’ meddlers’