U.K. Study Suggests Grocers Should Be Banned From Selling Alcohol

Grocery stores in the United Kingdom should stop selling alcohol, a controversial new study suggests. The study, published this month in the Journal of Public Health and authored by researchers from the University of Cardiff and elsewhere, suggests inexpensive food sold at groceries that also sell alcohol may encourage more alcohol sales.

"People who pop into the supermarket with a budget are attracted to cheap food offers and therefore spend more on alcohol," lead author Simon Moore told the Daily Mail this week.

https://reason.com/2021/04/24/u-k-study-suggests-grocers-should-be-banned-from-selling-alcohol/


I'll admit Texas has some dumb alcohol laws based on religious reasons from times well past their due date.

But I've said this before. If you collectively pay for health care, you don't really own your body. The powers that be will use the cost of maintaining and repairing your body as a means to control what you do with it..

It just makes things much more inconvenient for normal drinkers

and it won't address or help the alcoholism issue anyway

gelico wrote:


It just makes things much more inconvenient for normal drinkers

and it won't address or help the alcoholism issue anyway

In Texas we had some "dry" areas including entire counties out west. Forty years ago there were people driving 50 miles to buy beer. Pretty sure those that wanted to drink still did so.

It also created a black market, which made criminals out of otherwise law abiding folks.

How is grocery stores selling alcohol creating alcoholism? That’s just dumb.

I can’t see this happening over here actually. There’s too much money to be made by alcohol sales.

Maddog, your suspicion of anything that smacks of "government" to you has gotten the best of you on this one. I live here and I can see what the UK government does to discourage heavy drinking, and while it's more than the U.S. government does, it's pretty weak shit that most everybody ignores.

For example, a tiny message you see sometimes if you're a nerd like me and read labels, cautioning against excessive drinking of alcohol from an entity called "DrinkAware." (There's also a GambleAware, since gambling is legal across the whole of this supposed nanny state, if you were curious.)

We also get tobacco packaging that is quite different from the U.S. -- all tobacco is in the same generic, dark-brown packaging that typically has a graphic picture of someone who's dying of cancer thanks to smoking. People here are numb to it and smoke just as much (if not more) than people in the U.S.

This study was most likely neither commissioned by the government, nor was it altered to show something the folks who run the NHS want to have put out as fact. And I'm 99.9999 percent sure the government will ignore it and things will go on as they have.

By the way, I can buy my Jim Beam from the same place I buy my family's dinners. You can't do that. So nyah nyah nyah.

One time ordinary people could only go to the pub or an off licence to buy alcohol to take away, it did stop a lot of underage buying it but not all, some could pull off lying about their age others asked older people to buy for them.
The problem may well be people can buy a load of cans far cheaper than at a pub or that cheap but effective cider- Whiter Lightening or some such.
Drinking in a pub, of the traditional kind, was more about socialising while having a drink ok some got bladdered even then.
Now some people drink at home then go out and drink even more, I don't see the point in drinking until you don't remember where you've been or how you got home, didn't even do that in my young and foolish days.
I remember my father telling me as a young man you were only allowed 2 pints in some pubs,
the beer being so potent it was rationed.(That was a very long time ago though) You also had the watchful eye of your father and uncles to look after you for your first pints and to introduce you to the culture and etiquette of going to the pub/club, unless you lived in a really rough area maybe..

In a way, binge drinking began long ago as people didn’t drink water because it was unsafe. Everybody brewed their own small beer and children drank that as well. Higher potency alcohol was reserved for the rich and aristocracy. In Victorian times it became worse as gin and beer and other spirits were cheaper than food, so the poor especially became more hooked on it as it was warming, filling and cheap.

A lot of the old Texas blue laws that Maddog referenced where bizarre and not just about dry counties. You couldn’t buy menstrual products for instance. All the ones about alcohol just drove it underground like Prohibition did, thereby allowing crime to enter the scene. People also started drinking to excess because they never knew when they might next get some.

I suppose in modern times it all changed when in the UK they did away with the old licensing laws and allowed pubs to be opened all day and then grocery stores were allowed to sell alcohol 24/7.

But what other solutions are there? Alcohol related incidents are just as hard as say obesity on the NHS. Maybe a step like this is needed because educational reports do absolutely zilch in trying to combat it. It’s very very hard to put the genie back into the bottle.

Ben Reilly wrote:Maddog, your suspicion of anything that smacks of "government" to you has gotten the best of you on this one. I live here and I can see what the UK government does to discourage heavy drinking, and while it's more than the U.S. government does, it's pretty weak shit that most everybody ignores.

For example, a tiny message you see sometimes if you're a nerd like me and read labels, cautioning against excessive drinking of alcohol from an entity called "DrinkAware." (There's also a GambleAware, since gambling is legal across the whole of this supposed nanny state, if you were curious.)

We also get tobacco packaging that is quite different from the U.S. -- all tobacco is in the same generic, dark-brown packaging that typically has a graphic picture of someone who's dying of cancer thanks to smoking. People here are numb to it and smoke just as much (if not more) than people in the U.S.

This study was most likely neither commissioned by the government, nor was it altered to show something the folks who run the NHS want to have put out as fact. And I'm 99.9999 percent sure the government will ignore it and things will go on as they have.

By the way, I can buy my Jim Beam from the same place I buy my family's dinners. You can't do that. So nyah nyah nyah.

Actually since Rona, I can buy a mixed drink in my truck, along with my meal to go.

Supermarkets and off-licence corner shops won't stop selling booze, there is no point.
if people want to buy a bottle of wine the same time they pick up their evening meal....how ridiculous to suggest they may not be able to in the future.
It wont happen.

Syl wrote:Supermarkets and off-licence corner shops won't stop selling booze, there is no point.
if people want to buy a bottle of wine the same time they pick up their evening meal....how ridiculous to suggest they may not be able to in the future.
It wont happen.

Two years ago you would have said there is no way the country would all wear masks, while the pubs were all shut down.


Never underestimate government and its useful idiots doing things to save people from themselves.

I find the idea silly myself, but don't they already have laws about where the unhealthy food is placed in a store? Or is that another dumb idea that never came to pass?

Ben Reilly wrote:Maddog, your suspicion of anything that smacks of "government" to you has gotten the best of you on this one. I live here and I can see what the UK government does to discourage heavy drinking, and while it's more than the U.S. government does, it's pretty weak shit that most everybody ignores.

For example, a tiny message you see sometimes if you're a nerd like me and read labels, cautioning against excessive drinking of alcohol from an entity called "DrinkAware." (There's also a GambleAware, since gambling is legal across the whole of this supposed nanny state, if you were curious.)

We also get tobacco packaging that is quite different from the U.S. -- all tobacco is in the same generic, dark-brown packaging that typically has a graphic picture of someone who's dying of cancer thanks to smoking. People here are numb to it and smoke just as much (if not more) than people in the U.S.

This study was most likely neither commissioned by the government, nor was it altered to show something the folks who run the NHS want to have put out as fact. And I'm 99.9999 percent sure the government will ignore it and things will go on as they have.

By the way, I can buy my Jim Beam from the same place I buy my family's dinners. You can't do that. So nyah nyah nyah.

"This work was supported by funds from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council and Alcohol Research UK to the ELAStiC Project (ES/L015471/1). This work was conducted using the MRC Dementias Platform UK (DPUK; www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/582155v2). DPUK is a Public Private Partnership funded by the Medical Research Council (MR/L023784/1 and MR/009076/1). For further information on this resource visit www.dementiasplatform.uk. Jesse Smith acknowledges support from the Fulbright Commission and Cardiff University. We thank Allyson Smith for assistance with the ONS data. The funders had no role in the development of this manuscript or interpretation of data. We thank Yvette Amos for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript."

Maddog wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:Maddog, your suspicion of anything that smacks of "government" to you has gotten the best of you on this one. I live here and I can see what the UK government does to discourage heavy drinking, and while it's more than the U.S. government does, it's pretty weak shit that most everybody ignores.

For example, a tiny message you see sometimes if you're a nerd like me and read labels, cautioning against excessive drinking of alcohol from an entity called "DrinkAware." (There's also a GambleAware, since gambling is legal across the whole of this supposed nanny state, if you were curious.)

We also get tobacco packaging that is quite different from the U.S. -- all tobacco is in the same generic, dark-brown packaging that typically has a graphic picture of someone who's dying of cancer thanks to smoking. People here are numb to it and smoke just as much (if not more) than people in the U.S.

This study was most likely neither commissioned by the government, nor was it altered to show something the folks who run the NHS want to have put out as fact. And I'm 99.9999 percent sure the government will ignore it and things will go on as they have.

By the way, I can buy my Jim Beam from the same place I buy my family's dinners. You can't do that. So nyah nyah nyah.

"This work was supported by funds from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council and Alcohol Research UK to the ELAStiC Project (ES/L015471/1). This work was conducted using the MRC Dementias Platform UK (DPUK; www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/582155v2). DPUK is a Public Private Partnership funded by the Medical Research Council (MR/L023784/1 and MR/009076/1). For further information on this resource visit www.dementiasplatform.uk. Jesse Smith acknowledges support from the Fulbright Commission and Cardiff University. We thank Allyson Smith for assistance with the ONS data. The funders had no role in the development of this manuscript or interpretation of data. We thank Yvette Amos for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript."

Haha... And now you can add MD, of the Southern Anti-Government Redneck Society. Still looking for "anything that smacks of "government", I see.

Maddog wrote:

Syl wrote:Supermarkets and off-licence corner shops won't stop selling booze, there is no point.
if people want to buy a bottle of wine the same time they pick up their evening meal....how ridiculous to suggest they may not be able to in the future.
It wont happen.

Two years ago you would have said there is no way the country would all wear masks, while the pubs were all shut down.


Never underestimate government and its useful idiots doing things to save people from themselves.

I find the idea silly myself, but don't they already have laws about where the unhealthy food is placed in a store? Or is that another dumb idea that never came to pass?

You can't compare a global pandemic which shut more or less EVERY country down with the local Asda denying selling me a bottle of Chablis.

Syl wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Two years ago you would have said there is no way the country would all wear masks, while the pubs were all shut down.


Never underestimate government and its useful idiots doing things to save people from themselves.

I find the idea silly myself, but don't they already have laws about where the unhealthy food is placed in a store? Or is that another dumb idea that never came to pass?

You can't compare a global pandemic which shut more or less EVERY country down with the local Asda denying selling me a bottle of Chablis.

I'm just saying not to underestimate the meddling of government for you're own good.

Finland already separates alcohol purchases from food.

The state of Pennsylvania used to do the same, but it's been a minute since I lived there.

We have a large supermarket that sells alcohol in a separate section...you pay for your groceries then you enter a different section for your booze.
Most...sell food, booze, clothes, household, everything...you do your shop, you pay for everything altogether.

I don't know about a law that places unhealthy food in separate sections. Usually the most popular or expensive items are eye level, less popular cheaper brands either higher or lower...supermarkets pay fortunes to study shoppers habits and they want to capitalise all they can.

Syl wrote:We have a large supermarket that sells alcohol in a separate section...you pay for your groceries then you enter a different section for your booze.
Most...sell food, booze, clothes, household, everything...you do your shop, you pay for everything altogether.

I don't know about a law that places unhealthy food in separate sections. Usually the most popular or expensive items are eye level, less popular cheaper brands either higher or lower...supermarkets pay fortunes to study shoppers habits and they want to capitalise all they can.

I posted a link about it maybe a year ago.

Probably never materialized once Covid gave the government a real health issue to deal with.

Maddog wrote:

Syl wrote:We have a large supermarket that sells alcohol in a separate section...you pay for your groceries then you enter a different section for your booze.
Most...sell food, booze, clothes, household, everything...you do your shop, you pay for everything altogether.

I don't know about a law that places unhealthy food in separate sections. Usually the most popular or expensive items are eye level, less popular cheaper brands either higher or lower...supermarkets pay fortunes to study shoppers habits and they want to capitalise all they can.

I posted a link about it maybe a year ago.  

Probably never materialized once Covid gave the government a real health issue to deal with.  

I think I remember.

I suppose there is something to be said for not pushing unhealthy food to the front of the shelves. Obesity is about the biggest threat to peoples health now.
I doubt it will ever have a special shelf....even if it ever did, people have free choice to buy what they want, they may just have to bend lower to get it.