Fake freedom: alcohol, tobacco and gambling

The illusion of liberty is part of the trap

Last year’s Channel 4 documentary 'Alcohol, Dad and Me' may have helped reopen the debate on addiction and whether it is really enough for the State to stand back and let so many individuals be trapped and flounder.

Businesses and government have a two-part strategy to exploit your weaknesses:

• make profits and raise taxes from your self-indulgence

• say it is your choice so they can’t be blamed and sued

Companies will do whatever is profitable and are tempted to reduce ethical issues to relative-cost calculations. For example in 1970s USA Ford produced a model, the Pinto, known to be fire-hazardous, but worked out that the estimated $50 million compensation for 180 anticipated deaths was less than half the expense of modifying the vehicles to make them safer.

The State is expected to take a wider, less commercial view; besides, at first sight the figures seem to argue for stringent control of alcohol and tobacco:

• UK alcohol taxes in 2021/22: £13.1 billion, vs ‘health, social and economic consequences, estimated at between £21 and £52 billion a year.’

• UK tobacco duty 2021/22: £10.27 billion, vs ‘£14.7 billion per year’ cost to the economy.

That said, the revenues quoted above don’t include the income and corporation taxes and National Insurance contributions generated by the industries concerned. Taking them into account, perhaps ‘Pinto maths’ might win the argument after all.

[In the case of gambling, coldly considered, it already looks like net profit for the country -c. £3.1 billion in tax receipts, vs ‘annual economic burden of harmful gambling …about £1.27 billion.’ Does that make it right?]

Moral issues can’t be simply resolved by analysing cashflow; that’s the sort of thinking that could even be used to justify killing unproductive people, which is exactly what the writer and socialist George Bernard Shaw advocated in 1931 - and again in 1948.

Keeping the debate on the ethical level, liberty is a strong counter-argument to puritanical bans, though one has to weigh freedom in one’s personal habits against the harm and expense they cause to others.

A test case for that assessment was America’s experiment with Prohibition (1920-1933). Note that the Eighteenth Amendment did not forbid drinking alcohol; it proscribed the ‘manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.’ The term ‘manufacture’ implies large-scale production, so technically ‘home brew’ might be considered unexceptionable. The real target was the commercial exploitation of these products.

It’s often been supposed that Prohibition was a failure, but that may not be so. Not only were there definite health benefits but the popular idea that crime and violence increased may also be mistaken, as this 2019 article on Vox suggests. What brought it all to an end was the Depression: in 1933 the revival of the alcohol industry increased employment, made profits for associated businesses and raised much-needed revenue fot the Government.

On the other hand, if the 1933 Banking Act that curbed investment banking had been introduced when Prohibition started, maybe America would have been both more temperate and much wealthier, and there would have been no Depression.

Obviously there are challenges in trying to uproot well-established enterprises that batten on the vulnerability of individuals, but Prohibition was introduced on the back of much popular support and clearly did reduce alcohol consumption. The clampdown might have worked even better if Canadians had not helped to undermine it; it was this that hardened the previously porous border between the countries.

In the UK, the three vices discussed so far are money-makers and the costs to the NHS are only a fraction of the overall disbenefits, which are diffused throughout the economy, so the Government may not be so motivated to take action as if all costs impacted directly on the Treasury.

Tax hikes on alcohol and tobacco may sometimes be justified in terms of dissuading overconsumption, but one has yet to hear of many people giving up drinks and smokes because of the expense. My father started his tobacco habit when the local shopkeeper sold children a cigarette and a match for a penny; once addicted, his generation might have cheerfully called fags ‘coffin nails’ but it didn’t stop them buying packets of ten and twenty at a time as adults.

What would happen if drinkers and smokers all ‘went on strike’? It could be argued that the State is hooked on the income; and our political representatives are liable to be lobbied by powerful interests, too.

So the official strategy is to legalise, regulate and tax; and to try to keep the damage down to some acceptable level (measured how?), without going all-out for abolition.

Another element in that policy is to throw the responsibility back on to the addict. ‘Please drink responsibly’; ‘smoking kills’; ‘when the fun stops, stop’ - there. we told you! It was your free choice; we wouldn’t dream of interfering with your liberty; and there are organisations to help you - Drinkaware, ASH and NHS Stop Smoking, GambleAware - more fool you if you don’t seek help.

This plays on our perception of ourselves as free and rational, but the long-term recovery rates for the seriously addicted make for discouraging reading.

Even if we give up hope of turning the tide on the first three vices, should we also give in to the clamour for legalising currently illicit drugs? There is tremendous pressure to normalise cannabis use, even though the modern, genetically modified strains are so much stronger than what was around 50 or 60 years ago; and now one sees articles linked from social media suggesting the health or mental benefits of LSD.

The discussion of disbenefits needs to widen. It’s not enough to talk about serious illnesses and fatalities, or increases in criminal behaviour. A major objection to letting the young be ‘stoned’ - even if that doesn’t happen in their school years - is the tiredness and apathy that hold them back in those crucial years of early adulthood.

I saw that last when working in a scheme to help 15-year-olds who had been out of the education system for some time. One was falling asleep at nine in the morning, during the group session designed to raise morale and aspirations. He didn’t last there.

Another, a very nice lad who habitually referred to cannabis as ‘bud’ or ‘bud-dha’ and was desperate to stop even though his friends and family were a constant temptation, turned to religion, praying five times a day as Islam expects, and listening to beautifully-sung hymns to help his meditation. It’s not his fault that the amateur makers of the CD waited a few minutes into the light hypnosis to begin their perorations on the wickedness of Jews; I hope he made it through one temptation without falling into the other.

It’s not just poor fallible individuals who should be expected to behave responsibly; the State cannot disclaim its own share of responsibility.