East of England Co-op is to stop selling cheap lager and cider over 6.5% abv in a bid to crack down on anti-social behaviour.
The scheme, called ‘Reducing the Strength’, follows a trial in Suffolk. The co-op now says it will stop selling four brands in its stores across East Anglia and Essex: White Star cider; Co-op super strength beer; Tennent’s Super; and Carlsberg Special Brew.
Explaining the decision, Roger Grosvenor, executive officer for retail, said it would discourage soused people from hanging around stores, verbally abusing staff and dropping beer cans everywhere.
“It’s not about restricting the sale of the product, it’s about taking it away altogether, and stopping the fuelling of anti-social behaviour with a product that is only designed to get you drunk very quickly,” Grosvenor said.
“If people know you no longer stock these products, they no longer come to your store and become an issue.”
The East of England Co-op has produced a video to illustrate its message. The film is sprinkled with scenes of hoodied youths supping from cans in sepia-tinted housing estates, alongside shots of dank, beer can-strewn subways. It doesn’t do much for Ispwich’s tourist industry, quite honestly, but at least it’s set to some gloriously uplifting stock music, which rises to the sort of life-affirming crescendo that Coldplay would approve of.
Just to hammer home how proud the co-op is of its campaign, the video shows us a sign taped to the door of one branch: “We do not apologise for not selling super-strength alcohol in this store.”
Well, good for them. Inspector Andrew Mason of the Suffolk Constabulary tells us the “spectacular” results of the trial saw the number of street drinkers in Ipswich halved. But there’s something about the holier-than-thou smugness of the film that sticks in the craw: it’s all right for middle-class people to get sloshed on their authentic, pricey, organic cider, but it’s not all right for poor people to neck White Star.
Since the Suffolk trial, many more local authorities have begun their own trial bans on super-strength booze (despite the fact the legality of such measures isn’t yet clear). And as we reported last week, researchers have been working with councils to draw up measures to limit sales based on local projections of alcohol harm.
There’s no question there is a public health issue to be tackled – a report last weekend by Dr Foster painted an alarming picture of alcohol-related hospital admissions, particularly among those in their 40s.
But there’s a risk campaigns like the one in Suffolk could be seen as patronising and unfair to responsible drinkers, and confusing to retailers, as they grapple with different schemes in different counties, or are pressured into joining supposedly ‘voluntary’ bans.
At least East of England Co-op isn’t out of pocket: it says volume of alcohol sales remained consistent during the trial, while the number of alcohol units bought fell. But if it had materially impacted sales, I wonder whether the co-op would have been quite so keen to take a stance.
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