5 ms·

Is it not a bit soon to be drawing conclusions? Also there are so many other factors involved. I'm a scotsman and I'm personally not a fan of this law, nor the

by ck425 7y ago

Is it not a bit soon to be drawing conclusions? Also there are so many other factors involved. I'm a scotsman and I'm personally not a fan of this law, nor the 10am-10pm licensing laws. They're blunt instruments that fail to tackle the root causes. I'm not saying they don't work or that they're not relatively easy to implement but I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see an increase in deaths from other drugs.

bArray 7y ago
Agreed, correlation is not equal to causation. I think alcohol, drugs, mental illness and suicide should all be looked at together (at the very least). I suspect they might be just moving the problem elsewhere. Of course their statistics on drugs abuse will be approximations because people won't want to share their illegal habits. I was told a funny story from my Russian friend where they introduced some law to prevent people buying hard liquor after 10pm to curb alcoholism. He was quite amused to see people running into the shop at 9:55pm with a trolley and back out just before 10pm with a trolley full of hard liquor.
wastedhours 7y ago
> 10am-10pm licensing laws I didn't know this was a thing until going to Edinburgh for the first time a couple of years ago. The queue and item makeup at 9.45 made me see the flaw in this plan quite quickly.
- dboreham 7y ago
  Ugh. Now it's like England. I didn't know that either but I suppose because I'm old I've not tried to drink after 10pm recently.
  - makomk 7y ago
    England gave up on the mandatory hard cut-off at 11pm a decade or so ago exactly because it seemed counterproductive.
Someone1234 7y ago
How should they tackle the "root cause?" It is fine to criticize the existing solutions, but this isn't offering a counter proposal that could be used when they're scrapped (and until this proposal exists and comes on-tap, they're better than nothing).
- tomjen3 7y ago
  Jordan Peterson had a really good point when asked about alcohol and drugs, and he said the question should be why aren't we all doing them? His proposed solution to that was that people had to have some specific thing in their lives, that was powerful enough that it was more important to them than alcohol. It is like societies response to suicide prevention: put up a fence, don't make the people who want to jump not want to jump.
- cptskippy 7y ago
  Well here in America we don't pass regulatory laws until there's a proven solution that has consensus from all parties.
  - peeters 7y ago
    How do you prove a solution without trying it?
    - fhbdukfrh 7y ago
      I think it was sarcasm.
    - cptskippy 7y ago
      My comment was to be taken as a joke and also not untrue. The current state of our Congress is that one Party controls the Senate and refuses to bring any legislation to the floor, and the other Party controls the House and refuses to hold anyone accountable for anything using the excuse that it won't make it through the Senate. So because no one agrees on anything, nothing gets done.
  - wnevets 7y ago
tryitnow 7y ago
I actually support anything that makes alcohol harder to get, but I agree it's too soon to draw a conclusion. I would be interested in seeing if there's been a decline in domestic violence and other forms of crime that have a strong historical relation with alcohol consumption. My bet is that there's no such evidence. I'm also curious to see how much variation in deaths there are year over year. Maybe 20% changes aren't uncommon, in which case this study is just picking up noise and no signal. I'm also curious why they just don't implement a tax instead of minimum pricing, that way they could take that revenue and dedicate it to alcohol-related problems, at least somewhat offsetting the alcohol's cost to society.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  I think they chose this method because Scotland isn't able to change the alcohol duty; that's set by the UK to be equal everywhere.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
    But it also has benefits that raising alcohol duty doesn't: supermarkets etc can't absorb it by selling for a lower price or below-cost, pubs become more competitive with supermarkets, and the highest amount of alcohol for lowest price value pack disappears in theory.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- epicureanideal 7y ago
  I'd also be interested to see what the correlation is on family violence for different kinds of alcohol -- beer versus liquor versus wine for example.

by ck425 7y ago

bArray 7y ago

Agreed, correlation is not equal to causation. I think alcohol, drugs, mental illness and suicide should all be looked at together (at the very least). I suspect they might be just moving the problem elsewhere. Of course their statistics on drugs abuse will be approximations because people won't want to share their illegal habits. I was told a funny story from my Russian friend where they introduced some law to prevent people buying hard liquor after 10pm to curb alcoholism. He was quite amused to see people running into the shop at 9:55pm with a trolley and back out just before 10pm with a trolley full of hard liquor.

wastedhours 7y ago

> 10am-10pm licensing laws I didn't know this was a thing until going to Edinburgh for the first time a couple of years ago. The queue and item makeup at 9.45 made me see the flaw in this plan quite quickly.

dboreham 7y ago
Ugh. Now it's like England. I didn't know that either but I suppose because I'm old I've not tried to drink after 10pm recently.
- makomk 7y ago
  England gave up on the mandatory hard cut-off at 11pm a decade or so ago exactly because it seemed counterproductive.

Someone1234 7y ago

How should they tackle the "root cause?" It is fine to criticize the existing solutions, but this isn't offering a counter proposal that could be used when they're scrapped (and until this proposal exists and comes on-tap, they're better than nothing).

tomjen3 7y ago
Jordan Peterson had a really good point when asked about alcohol and drugs, and he said the question should be why aren't we all doing them? His proposed solution to that was that people had to have some specific thing in their lives, that was powerful enough that it was more important to them than alcohol. It is like societies response to suicide prevention: put up a fence, don't make the people who want to jump not want to jump.
cptskippy 7y ago
Well here in America we don't pass regulatory laws until there's a proven solution that has consensus from all parties.
- peeters 7y ago
  How do you prove a solution without trying it?
  - fhbdukfrh 7y ago
    I think it was sarcasm.
  - cptskippy 7y ago
    My comment was to be taken as a joke and also not untrue. The current state of our Congress is that one Party controls the Senate and refuses to bring any legislation to the floor, and the other Party controls the House and refuses to hold anyone accountable for anything using the excuse that it won't make it through the Senate. So because no one agrees on anything, nothing gets done.
- wnevets 7y ago

tryitnow 7y ago

I actually support anything that makes alcohol harder to get, but I agree it's too soon to draw a conclusion. I would be interested in seeing if there's been a decline in domestic violence and other forms of crime that have a strong historical relation with alcohol consumption. My bet is that there's no such evidence. I'm also curious to see how much variation in deaths there are year over year. Maybe 20% changes aren't uncommon, in which case this study is just picking up noise and no signal. I'm also curious why they just don't implement a tax instead of minimum pricing, that way they could take that revenue and dedicate it to alcohol-related problems, at least somewhat offsetting the alcohol's cost to society.

Symbiote 7y ago
I think they chose this method because Scotland isn't able to change the alcohol duty; that's set by the UK to be equal everywhere.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  But it also has benefits that raising alcohol duty doesn't: supermarkets etc can't absorb it by selling for a lower price or below-cost, pubs become more competitive with supermarkets, and the highest amount of alcohol for lowest price value pack disappears in theory.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
epicureanideal 7y ago
I'd also be interested to see what the correlation is on family violence for different kinds of alcohol -- beer versus liquor versus wine for example.