"£25 billion spent on alcohol abuse"

They obviously come from Planet Zog.

Having shamelessly rewritten the statistics to quadruple the number of alcohol related NHS admissions, they now throw this crap on the table:

The £25 billion bill is made up of NHS costs of £2.7 billion, crime costs of up to £15 billion and loss of productivity of up to £7.3 billion, the Department of Health report said.

The NHS £2.7 billion I have already covered. £15 billion for crime breaks down into shoplifting (see below) and fights outside pubs (which I covered here). And that loss of productivity is not a loss to the economy; a hangover is part of each person's cost of drinking in the evening (covered here)*.

Here's the gummint's killler proposal:

The report suggested ... off-licences be prevented from displaying alcohol near check-outs.

*sigh*

Sensibly run shops always have Highly Nickable Items (small, tempting and/or high value) either: at the counter (sweets, batteries, condoms); behind the counter (cigarettes, spirits); or within eyeshot thereof (the fridge for lager and cider); or on the top shelf (porn mags are very expensive and exactly the sort of thing that teenagers want to steal - this is not just prudishness).

So if we implemented this proposal, the cost of crime (and the amount of under-age drinking) would go up; or have they already borne this Unintended Consequence in mind - if half your alcohol is being stolen, you'd stop stocking it?

* In the same way as not doing overtime is part of the cost of leisuretime.