Hats-off to Dick Puddlecote and Chris Snowdon for being quick to notice the latest absurdity being considered by the Commons health select committee: plain packaging for alcohol. Yes, really. The committee is holding a consultation on the government’s “alcohol strategy” (and how depressing it is to contemplate the very existence of such a thing) as part of which they are soliciting views on a number of control-measures. These include:
Raising the legal drinking age; and
Come now, you may say, this is only a “listening exercise” conducted by a committee of backbench MPs. To which I reply: come off it, are you still that naive? The public health racket specialises in opening Overton Windows. This is another example of that. Today’s absurdity is tomorrow’s policy. Just considering plain packaging for booze – brown paper bags for one and all! – makes it more likely this will actually eventually happen. The inconceivable can become conceivable pretty damn quickly.Plain packaging and marketing bans.
As if to prove this, lo and behold: there are calls for minimum prices for lardy foods too. And now that the government has conceded the principle on minimum pricing for alcohol it is hard to see why it can be trusted not to interfere with the market for other consumer products it finds expediently distasteful.
This really is one of those areas where everything will get worse and not even in a “it needs to get worse before it can get better” way because, I am afraid, it just won’t get better.
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