I feel Ill. Well, I have been ill, with what, it seems increasingly likely, is an ulcer. At least, I’m hoping it’s an ulcer, as that is the least of the possibilities – which include pancreatitis, liver problems, kidney explosions and gall bladder eruptions. The doctor reports soon. I prefer the idea of an ulcer.
I have, over the past two months, barely been drinking and have restricted my whisky consumption to fume-inhalation of a sample which, for some reason, I have failed to remove from my desk. Namely a rather delightful Stronachie 12-year-old from stoutly-independent bottler AD Rattray of Ayrshire (fine combination of sweet and dry, biscuits, tonic wine and plain oak). Once I have the all-clear, and my various aches and pains finally disappear, I won’t be returning to my previous toping habits, however. I can actually feel, in my imagination, an unwatered malt rolling down my throat, ripping off layers of cells as it goes, burning and inflaming and essentially, Doing Me No Good At All.
Water. I’ll be adding water.
Concern about the promotion of cheap beer and cider
But that is not what’s making me feel ill, not really. It’s having read the three powerful and damning reports from SHAAP – Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems relating to the conference held by the organisation in April under the title “The ‘(Ir)responsibility Deal’ – Public Health and Big Business”. Because I feel implicated in the campaign of cloudy misinformation and deception so forensically identified therein. Because I have unthinkingly been part of the campaigning dubbed by academics Chis Holden and Benjamin Hawkins ‘The Whisky Gloss’.
It’s all about minimum alcohol pricing, basically. As we know, the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 was passed by the Scottish Parliament unopposed on 24 May 2012 and the Bill received royal assent a month later, meaning that alcohol could not be sold in Scotland below 50p per unit. It was supposed to come into force on 1 April this year but has been challenged in the courts. As Peter Rice, SHAAP’s chairman, retired consultant psychiatrist, NHS Tayside, said: “The reason for this is a judicial review in the Court of Session brought by the Scotch Whisky Association, Spirits Europe and the CEEV, a European wine trade body. The Judicial review began in October 2012 and was postponed after the late submission of 240 pages of material by the industry bodies. The evidence was eventually heard in January 2013 and the judge’s opinion is awaited.”
The involvement of the Scotch Whisky Association in this is a disgrace. It illustrates just how much that organisation is essentially an alcohol-industry group rather than one representing the specific interests of whisky — because whisky is the loser when it comes to unrestricted cheap availability of alcohol. As Dr Rice points out in his paper, the growth in consumption of cheap cider, and vodka, the main target of the bill, has been at the expense of whisky. And as of now, that kind of alcoholic drink is cheaper than ever in Scotland’s supermarkets. Consumption may have fallen slightly, but why? Because the economic downturn means people can’t afford even legal rotgut. Neatly destroying the argument of those who oppose minimum pricing, that ‘price has no effect on consumption for those with alcohol problems.’
So what is ‘Whisky Gloss’?
That’s what you see in every supermarket these days – the prominent display of upmarket single malts and the very public embracing by drinks multinationals of the ‘thinking connoisseur’ market. The single malt fan, after all, drinks sparingly, carefully and discriminatingly, for enjoyment of taste and cultural and historical context. We are the acceptable face of alcohol consumption. We are a smokescreen for the real, down and dirty drinks business – selling vast quantities of cheap booze to anyone who will buy it legally; with the really filthy secret that, like tobacco-floggers and heroin dealers, what is going on in an effort to get hapless folk addicted to a damaging drug in order to make money.
Please read the papers presented at the conference which has been woefully under-reported.
I won’t be used by dealers in legalised drugs to hide their nefarious doings; but I do wonder if we can think of alternatives. Perhaps we need to drink (carefully) only the whiskies made by firms NOT associated with the Scotch Whisky Association? Independent producers (of beers and wines too) with NO links to alcopops and brain-rotting ciders? I hereby moot the possible formation of a group called something like “The Good Drinkers: Socially responsible, discriminating and intelligent”, intolerant too of the ‘Cause Related Marketing’ (CRM) and ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) flim-flam that we may have been inadvertently recruited into by Big Alcohol.
You in? I am, once I’m feeling better.