Minimum pricing for alcohol: a Millian perspective

Abstract

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has recently sought to introduce minimum pricing for alcohol in order to tackle drink-related problems. This paper outlines what the prominent nineteenth-century liberal reformer John Stuart Mill would have said about such a proposal. Mill's 1859 On Liberty argued that the only legitimate reason for the state or society to interfere in an individual's conduct is to prevent harm to others, rejecting paternalistic interventions or moralistic legislation. After outlining Mill's general position, this paper gathers a number of his scattered remarks on alcohol. It seems that he would be prepared to endorse a number of restrictions on the sale of alcohol, including age restrictions, mandatory health warnings and even anti-social behaviour orders for those guilty of violent crime when drunk. Nonetheless, Mill is clear that the state has no right to prohibit alcohol and, for the same reasons, that the state has no right to increase its cost for purpose of deterring drinking – a measure that, Mill argues, differs only in degree from outright prohibition. Thus, according to Mill, the proposal of the SNP oversteps the bounds of legitimate government interference, unjustly interfering in individual liberty. Interestingly, however, Mill allows that governments have the right to tax inessential goods for purposes of raising revenue, which suggests that the government could legitimately tax alcohol, provided its reasoning was not (as the SNP has stressed its is) to deter people from drinking.

Keywords:

• alcohol
• pricing
• liberalism
• J.S. Mill
• legitimacy
• Scotland

Acknowledgements

I thank Andrea Baumeister and Danielle Wisbey for extensive discussions of this topic, Antony Duff for written comments on an earlier draft, and audiences in Glasgow (January 2012) and Stirling (February 2012) for helpful questions and feedback, particularly from Ben Colburn, Rowan Cruft, and Brian Ho.

Notes

This is, of course, a crucial concession. The proposal is not justified if not efficacious. Moreover, even if it would be efficacious, it would need to be shown that no less costly alternative would be (almost) as good.

This is true as an approximation. Since laws have to be framed in general terms, it may be that some harmless actions are prohibited by a law that aims to prevent harms. But this is a case where intervention is over-inclusive. This would not be legitimate if it were practical to prevent the harms without interfering in the harmless actions. I return to such issues below.

At least, not logically necessary. As an empiricist and a utilitarian, Mill's ultimate conclusions must rest on what proves efficacious. It might be shown that no other measures would in fact successfully prevent social harms that arise from drinking and that preventing these harms outweighs the loss of liberty that minimum pricing would entail. Then, and only then, would Mill be reconciled to such a proposal. Since questions of efficacy must be bracketed here, it is perhaps better to re-state my conclusion more moderately: for Mill, the presumption would be against minimum pricing, unless and until it was shown to (a) prevent more social harm than good and (b) be the least costly way of doing so. Any harm that drinkers do to themselves, however, would not be counted in these calculations.

We might deny this, for instance, pointing to the different expressive implications of increased price and a fine. But consumers do not always respond to these signals as the price- (or fine-) setters intend. If people regard a fine as a price, then they may be more likely to act in the undesirable way!