It is a quirk of law that a bottle of alcohol-free beer must list its ingredients but there is no such requirement for a bottle containing actual alcohol.
“It makes no sense,” says Dr Peter Rice of NHS Tayside in Scotland.
Dr Rice, a consultant psychiatrist and chairman of Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems, was a leader in the campaign there to introduce minimum unit pricing, a “floor price” below which a unit of alcohol cannot be sold.
The measure has been brought in, from May 1st, to reduce harmful drinking caused by the strongest and cheapest alcohol, and last month the parliament in Wales passed similar legislation.
Introducing it took six years from the time the Scottish parliament passed the legislation.
Now Scotland and the rest of the EU are watching the very slow passage of the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill through the Dáil – the State’s attempt to deal with Ireland’s problem drinking. The latest row is over labelling and the provisions to include health warnings on labels linking alcohol to cancer.
Ireland will be the first EU state to have such labelling if it gets the green light from the European Commission. The changes had to be notified to the commission, which is expected to make a decision next month.
The legislation has taken almost three years to date, since it was first introduced in December 2015 by then minister for health Leo Varadkar.
The Scottish legislation was delayed by a legal challenge from the Scotch Whisky Association.
I’m happy to say as a consumer I noticed that a week after minimum price came in, multipacks shifted from being 440ml cans to 330ml bottles
“The association took the view that the measure was illegal under EU trade law – the Treaty of Lisbon essentially – that it was a restriction on trade,” the NHS consultant says
Source: Marie O'Halloran, The Irish Times, 16/07/18
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