A line of cocaine is now cheaper than half a pint of cider

Nick

I thought the alchol price rises did not come into effect until Sunday? Did Darling not say that cigarettes were going up by 11p from 6:00pm today? Either way I totally agree with Fraser, it will have no effect on consumption. It's a way to fill the black hole left by Brown.

Mike

The booze taxes are not to address binge drinking, rather to help the governments binge borrowing

dave, surrey

surely there's a parallel to be drawn with petrol prices. High petrol tax hasn't stopped people driving around. If it's what people want to do (drive/get drunk) then they'll do it.

William

Putting up tax on alcohol has always been the soft option for Chancellors and Darling is no different. That will never change. I know some of the 'young crazies' round my way like to spend their Friday nights drinking but mixing it with 'pills' for that extra oomph - 'pills' being, as your headline suggests, much cheaper compared to alcohol. There might be some research that price increases cause a slight decline in alcohol consumption but that there is a greater increase of 'recreational' usage to compensate. Purely anecdotal. The Government seems to be inadvertently encouraging The Kids to mix'n'match their poison to get maximum benefit (and maximum damage to their systems) from their limited budgets. Unintended consequences?

Tom

In Dec 07, according to the figures you link to, cocaine was £45 per gram. I'm clearly not as familiar with this as you, Fraser: how many lines in a gram? Half a pint of cider (I don't drink that, either) is presumably somewhere between £1-£2, depending on where you're drinking it. So - somewhere between 20 and 40 lines of coke in a gram? Is that right?

John

I agree that price increases will not have any impact on binge drinking - much more effective would be proper regulation of operation of bars to limit noise levels (music which is too loud to allow conversation means people drink not talk), increase seating and tabling requirements (if you can't put your drink down you are more likely to keep taking sips) etc. Enforcing the law on being drunk and disorderly would also help.

Fraser Nelson

Tom, typically a standard line of cocaine (a "bump") is 35mg. You can also do a "rail" which is about three times more - but you really have to be a bit of a Winehouse for that. But my illustrative figure (as you say, cider price varies enormously) is on £1.57 a line. Ectasy is about £2 a tab now. And in my defence: I've never touched the stuff! Although listening to Darling's speech, I was tempted..

Tom

OK, according to Drugscope, "A gram of cocaine can make between 10 and 20 lines for snorting, depending on its strength" - so a line is between £2.25 and £4.50. You're paying too much for your cider, Fraser.

Fraser Nelson

Well, I am quite fond of that Scrumpy stuff at my local. Drugscope's figures suggest 50mg or 100mg a line - which does sound a lot. eMedicine says 20mg a line. I think we neeed an expert to arbitrate...

Nicholas

Spot on about enforcement Fraser (good to see you quote some statistics too) and John, which I have commented on before, but John also raises good points about the way modern bars operate. Ghastly places. Impossible to have a quiet, civilised drink with friends.

charlie

coke is about 2 pound aline on the street now and about 40 mg a line so they all talk rubbish

Fraser Nelson

Charlie, your figures are in our ball park. £2 for 40mg = £50 a gramme - quite similar to the Home Office street price figure of £45 a gramme. That brings us back to how many mg in a line. We've had estimates between 20mg and 100mg. Your 40mg is quite close to my 35mg. So we're pretty much agreed on the price - the rest just depends on how much you can hoover up your nose (or whatever you crazy kids do with it) and how much suckers like me pay for our cider.

The ultimate loser

at the end of the day...the politicians spend too much time in london so their cocaine prices are probably as, if not more, inflated as their booze prices. fools.

Alan Brownfield

"A line of coke is now cheaper than half a pint of cider." Oh dear that sounds really bad. So what are you suggesting? A tax on lines of coke?

Cameron makes an almost identical claim on one of his videos: "It is now cheaper for a teenager to buy an ecstasy bill than a cinema ticket." Oh right. Well I look forward to The Conservatives subsidising cinema tickets then.

John W

I think you might have missed the point Alan.

Adam

All the research shows that incrases in duty have definite. but subtle effects. Big increase across the board lead to: 1) Increases in off-trade consumption and decrease in on-trade consumption. ie. people drink at home; as you get more 'bang for buck. This will particualry pronounced this year as the economic news gets grim. 2) An increase in evasion, with a rise in the number of legitimate booze cruises by ordinary people, and the return of a significant black market, last seen in the early 1990s. 3) Substitution. People will trade down; with cheap scotch replacing good scotch, and ironically, an increase in consumption of cheaper more potent booze. All in all, very bad public policy, and very bad politics.

Alan Brownfield

My point is that the comparison with the cost of a line of coke is meaningless just as is Cameron's comparison with ecstasy pills and cinema tickets. Governments have no control over the price of drugs. It is merely supply and demand. Capitalism at it's purest.

These kinds of comparisons sound very prescient until you actually stop and think about them. If you removed the tax, would cocaine addicts suddenly switch over to drinking scrumpy?

By all means discuss the worth of tax as a means to control behaviour, but if you don't compare like with like then you are just making a rather banal point.

Richard

There's no way it will stop the kids drinking, as most of them will surely see a rise in pocket money. For pub going folk, it will be a case of "lets have a bottle of cheap supermarket vodka before we go out, so we won't have to spend as much". It will be the people who love a proper pint (and the landlords who sell it to them) who will suffer the most. With the effect of the smoking ban still ongoing, it couldn't happen at a worse time for them. Personally, I only go out maybe once a month now, and due to the ridiculous prices, I've only bought 2 or 3 packets of cigarettes and one or 2 bottles of spirits in this country in the last 3 years, preferring to live on duty free's, purchased by anyone I know who's going away.

James

Alan - You are correct when you say Government's have no control over the price of drugs. But this is due to the fact that the Governments drug and social policies are complete rubbish. More successful border security would push up the price of drugs, as would some form of legalisation and taxation. Or the Government can make a load of noise and do nothing. A remarkably similar response to it's approach to anti-social drinking and crime in general.

Alan Brownfield

Short of putting a manned barbed wire fence around the entire coastline, I can't see how the government could drastically alter the amount of drugs getting in. The only way to stop the supply of cocaine is to stop the demand, and much of that comes from those in showbiz, media and politics. All part of their 'normal experience' apparently.

jim hamilton

Legalise drugs ,sell them through supermarkets etc, tax them and then have very heavy penalties for anyone who sells drugs illegally. You wont stop people sinning so make it legal and tax them. Almost certainly othewr taxes could then be reduced

marcus turner

obviosly not jim, ppl who sell now dnt get caught, so will jus influence more kids 2 do it, look at ciggrettes. if coke was so easy 2 get 4 any1 every 1 wud do it

Jack London

4p on a pint of beer. I doubt most normal people drink more than 20 pints in an average week, probably less, unless they don't have to get up for work in the morning or have an alcohol problem. So an extra 80 pence a week isn't going to alter anyone's habits. I hate this country under NEW labour with the chav menace and NEW murder (murder now renamed to manslaughter = community service). Every day I think I'll just give up work, go on the dole, start to deal drugs to top up my income, become 'cared for' by the community. I drift ooops sorry.