New rules to stop weekend binge-drinking 'visions of hell'
Home Office Minister Damien Green dismissed suggestions that minimum pricing would have no impact on binge drinking. Speaking to Radio 4's Today programme he said:
Too many of us have seen city centres on a Friday and Saturday night often become a vision of hell. A lot of this is fuelled by very cheap, very strong alcohol.
The point of having a minimum unit price rather than, say, increasing taxation, is that you can target ... the shops that do deliberately sell very strong drink very cheaply.
It is just a fact of economics and indeed of life that if you put the price of a particular product up, demand for it goes down.
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