Across America, in the past few years, something remarkable has begun. The power that the gun lobby has enjoyed over public discourse and policy has begun to crumble. Mass shooting after mass shooting, murder after murder has eventually produced a mass movement in response. Citizen activism and legal challenges have combined with the use of political pressure on America's political classes to place gun regulation at the centre of political discourse and controls on firearms not just a possibility in America, but an inevitability.
What if there was a product in Britain that facilitated assaults, murders, manslaughters, child abuse and neglect, sexual violence, a mental health crisis and left the taxpayer with an enormous bill? What if this product was in real terms cheaper than it had ever been and its sale, marketing and pricing was subject to increasingly light touch regulation? What if the science that pointed to its harms was routinely ignored or downplayed by the government and its tabloid cheerleaders and what if there was a vast army of lobbyists speaking up in its favour, ensuring that its hold over the public imagination was nothing short of hegemonic?
That would be bad, wouldn't it?
Unfortunately, this product exists in nearly every home in the land and is marketed as the universal panacea to all ills. It is, of course, alcohol. One recent news story has served once more to illuminate the destructive power of alcohol and its potential to rip lives apart. In August this year Anna Roselyn Evans a 46 year old mother of two and her husband were enjoying a camping trip in North Wales. The couple, from Aberystwyth, were starying at the Rhyd Y Galen campsite in Snowdonia.
At the same campsite Jake Waterhouse, 27, of Partington, Greater Manchester drove a car while heavily intoxicated with alcohol, after having drunk most of a bottle of whisky. He collided with another tent before driving over the Evans' tent, trapping Anna under the car. He fled the scene, leaving five desperate campers struggling to lift the vehicle off Anna's body. She was taken to hospital but died of her injuries.
Jake Waterhouse wept in court as he was sentenced to eight years in prison, one can only hope that these were tears of remorse for the suffering he has caused through his reckless and foolish actions. The role of the alcohol industry in producing and marketing a powerful, addictive and destructive drug was completely overlooked but in many ways the industry is a silent accomplice in this and countless other crimes.
Those who champion the concept of individual responsibility would argue that Jake Waterhouse's decision to drink was his alone and that he must be held to account. This view is correct to an extent, in that we are all responsible for how we behave, but it fails to take account of the bigger contextual picture. The daily, widespread and consistent nature of alcohol related crimes and harms suggests that causation lies beyond simply individual moral failings.
A systemic critique of this tragedy might suggest that the industrialised mass production and marketing of a powerful dangerous drug which is culturally sanctioned and legitimised not only makes violent crimes and drink related negligence more likely, it makes them an inevitable part of this particular process of profit accumulation. As with guns in America, the appalling cost to society of alcohol is the price that socially we all must pay in order for drinks manufacturers to profit and drinker to enjoy alcohol. If it were possible to hold breweries and distilleries to account for the harm their products cause, the sale and marketing of alcohol would be radically different.
The alcohol industry's favourite word is responsibility. They have agreed non binding responsibility deals with the Ministry of Health and each successive Secretary of State for Health has parroted the same absurd and nonsensical mantra, that it is better to work with industry than against it. This craven and compromised response to one of the great public health crises of our time is indicative of the all too comfortable relationship between the addiction industries and those who are supposed to protect the public from harm.
The other use of the term responsibility is to implore the public to enjoy its products responsibly and, by implication, relieve the alcohol industry from any moral duties to manage or mitigate the harm it causes. Problematic drinkers have lost the power to drink responsibly, as the industry knows all too well and it is these drinkers that provide alcohol manufacturers with a significant proportion of their profits. Jake Waterhouse was unable to drink responsibly and Anna Evans died as a result, but all efforts to place constraints on the industry, including minimum pricing per unit in England have been resisted. In Wales, a minimum unit price of 50p is expected to come in to force next year; already in Scotland where it has been introduced, levels of alcohol related violence and harm have begun to significantly decline.
Until we are able to look with some degree of honesty at the power of alcohol and the power of those who manufacture, market and sell it, the Jake Waterhouses of the world will be the only ones held to account and the industry will evade scrutiny and slip away, like the silent accomplices they are.