http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35894548

Can't see why that would work myself, who is the demographic there?

You would have to ban all traditional brands, or they would have to brew "for UK only" drinks. Getting Chilean, French, South African, Australian etc. wine producers to water down their wine will also not go down well... I can see a resurgant boom in booze-cruises across the Channel to fill up cars / vans with cheap booze.

The strength of the alcohol isn't the problem, it is the attitude to alcohol that is the problem. Changing the alcohol content isn't going to do much, other than force people further down the quality scale, because they need to buy "twice as much as before"... And as long as that attitude is prevalent, nothing will help - just look at prohibition in the USA, drinking didn't stop, it went underground.

We are going to an Easter party today, there will be a lot of people and they will be drinking "normal" beers, wines and spirits, but I doubt any of them will be getting drunk, because that is socially unacceptable - it is the younger generation (25 - 35) who grew up getting totally blotto over here and "flat-rate" parties, but they have been outlawed. Our girls don't really drink and look askance if we have a beer on a Saturday night at home. (A case of beer lasts about 12 months on average and we bought 4 cases of wine at an open day at the local industrial estate (wine seller had a stand), most of it is still in the cellar.)

There are parts of the community that drink hard here (especially older people who grew up in the 40s and 50s and "Russian Germans"), other than that, there are a couple of days a year where people get really drunk - May Day and Father's Day (Whitsun). Carnival also sees some excess, as does Kermis and Jahresmarkt (Fun Fairs). But general, regular heavy drinking just doesn't seem that big a problem, at least here in the province.

If they start watering down my whisky because some teenage pisshead chooses to get wasted on a Friday night, there's going to be hell to pay.

It's a lot harder to drink 5 pints of strong IPA than weak lager.


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True...but then I would not want to drink any weak Lager but would want to drink a good IPA