Tightening the grip in Britain
Today’s strategy, by the Home Office and the Department of Health, broadens the Government’s offensive against excessive drinking, with the focus moving beyond teenagers and the binge-drinkers to include those regularly sipping wine at home.
As part of the strategy, ministers wish to highlight the increasing burden that drink-related disease is placing on the NHS, which four years ago was estimated to be costing between £1.3 billion and £1.7 billion. Ministers want drunkenness in public to be as socially unacceptable in ten years’ time as smoking or drink-driving is today.
There are few human activities that cannot be legitimately tightly controlled by the State if the State is the source of all medical care. This is why leftists have been lusting for this in the U.S. for years.
"Free" health care is going to come at a different kind of price.