A deal too good to be legal

As of April 6th any pub owner offering free drink specials, all you can drink deals, or drinking games could lose their liquor license, end up 20,000 pounds lighter or in jail for 6 months.

Other deals that are made unlawful are “dentists’ chairs” where drink is poured directly into the mouths of customers making it impossible for them to control the amount they are drinking.

The purpose of this new ordinance is to cut down on drink-related crime, or the “scourge of binge drinking” as Home Office minister Alan Campbell put it. The belief is that binge drinking is the result of cheaply available liquor.

A few years back, leaders in the UK believed that forcing pubs to close at certain times was a contributing factor to binge drinking (people getting in those last rounds before last call) and pouring into the streets with nothing else to do but brawl. But in 2005 the licensing laws in the UK changed.  “at last grown-ups will be treated like grown-ups.” forcing The licensing minister of the time declared. But only 5 years later it seems grownups don’t have the ability to say no to a good deal. While leaders in the UK hope that keeping prices high will slow peoples’ drinking, it will most likely just result in bigger tabs. As pubs continue to struggle and close thanks to the increasing liquor taxes, they might not be too angry about their patrons spending more money, of course without the specials pubs may find their patron numbers drying up.