The Booze Story

ARD (public TV, Channel One for Germans), discussed a curious story on booze prices today.

Up in Scotland, they went and started up a minimum price for booze (beer, wine and the hard stuff) five days ago. 

There's talk in Germany over the idea.

Germans will tell you that there is a serious drinking problem in the country because....well....booze is cheap.  Yes, you could walk into any grocery, and find the cheapest stuff you want (at least 40 proof) for roughly four Euro a bottle, and you could do the no-name grain alcohol for maybe two Euro a bottle.  Beer runs (for the cheapest) at around 25 Euro cents a bottle (it's the stuff that taste awful).  Wine?  Occasionally, you can find some cheapo wine for roughly one Euro a bottle (the stuff that you would never drink). 

The idea being talked about is that you could reduce booze consumption by setting up a fake price. 

The basic Scottish idea?  They didn't just limit it to the hard stuff....they went to beer, and wine as well.  The pricing went to a minimum of 50 pence (57 cents) per ten milliliters.

I noted in the basic story....the Whiskey front (the companies) weren't keen on this and fought it in court.

The general increase?  I selected Strongbow, and looked at the newer price....roughly five to six dollars more than it would have been before.

Who gets the extra profit?  Curiously, it was left out of the story.  I would think the government, but maybe the distributor or brewer would be the one.

Putting this kind of law up in Germany?  If you went and set a 35-percent to 45-percent increase in any alcohol.....you'd get folks pretty hostile in a short period of time.  It wouldn't just be the alcoholics complaining....I suspect that fifty percent of the German public would be angry.

The wine industry in Germany?  They'd fight this type of fake pricing. 

What would happen here?  I suspect that Germans would go out and start to brew their own beer, and develop more apple wine gimmicks.  You'd basically destroy a whole element of German business in a short period of time.

If I were to predict the path here.....no one within the CDU or SPD would dare to bring this up.  It'd be strictly the Green Party that pushes the idea.  Odds of achieving here? I give it a ten-percent chance.