Alex Sunier
Students will suffer if a planned price hike in beer and wine comes into effect.
The Prime Minister’s proposal last week to introduce a minimum price of 45p per unit of alcohol will mean students having to pay over a pound a can for certain lagers and ciders.
This has been introduced as part of the Government’s alcohol strategy to “tackle the scourge of violence caused by binge drinking”.
Clem Rix, a 20-year-old history and politics student, said: “I think it’s completely rubbish. Everyone is getting screwed over.”
Binge drinking
The 45p minimum would mean a can of strong lager could not be sold for less than £1.56 and a bottle of wine below £4.22. English literature student Joseph Baker said: “I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing; the streets are dangerous when everyone’s drunk, curbing binge drinking is a positive.”
Pre-drinking, which has been dubbed by the Government as ‘pre-loading’, is thought to be connected with the thousands of alcohol-related crimes that take place every year.
Maxine Kranck, 22, an art and design student, said: “The reason that people pre-drink anyway is because it’s more expensive to buy alcohol in pubs and clubs. People won’t stop pre-drinking until prices go down in those places.”
The Government are also hoping that the new minimum will lower the amount of alcohol related hospital admissions.
Research carried out by Sheffield University for the government shows a 45p minimum would reduce the consumption of alcohol by 4.3 per cent, leading to 2,000 fewer deaths and 66,000 hospital admissions after 10 years.
Some reports have suggested that these new measures will damage the finances of the poorest and youngest most, while the real culprits continue as they are.
Middle class boozers
A report by the Office of National Statistics in 2010 revealed that the people who drank more on average were those in the middle class professions rather than working class and that people over the age of 45 were more likely to drink every day compared to their younger counterparts.