Born in 1946 and brought up in Cupar, Fife, I was educated at the local school - 
Mr Stevenson said that it was time the sale of ultra-cheap forms of alcohol, priced with young people especially in mind, was curtailed in Scotland’s shops. The bill to ban the sale of alcohol at under 50p a unit (a unit being roughly equivalent to a shot of spirits, a small glass of wine, or half a pint of beer) passed at Holyrood. The Labour Party, once again, abstained.
Commenting after the vote, Stewart Stevenson said:
“I previously served on the Parliament’s Justice Committee. I remember well a series of visits we undertook to various towns looking at anti-social behaviour. Among them was Lossiemouth and the message which came across loud and clear was that something needed to be done about the availability of cheap alcohol, which was a major factor in making people’s lives a misery through the anti-social behaviour it led to.
“Medical professionals and the police also regularly tell me of the pressures on emergency services caused by drunken and abusive behaviour.
“This behaviour is not acceptable and Scotland’s relationship with booze has to change.
“In Scotland we have some alarmingly high levels of alcoholism, which is incredibly damaging to the drinker themselves, their families, friends and the wider community. Children in households where excessive alcohol consumption occurs are at significant risk.
“With this new legislation in place the minimum price per unit of alcohol is to be 50p. That is a significant step forward.
“Let’s not forget where we’ve come from in this debate, though. When minimum pricing was first mooted by the SNP, all of the opposition parties in Holyrood opposed it and voted it down. Now, just a couple of years on, we see the Tories and the Liberal Democrats making a complete u-turn and backing the policy. So it is now only the Labour Party that seem isolated in their position of wanting more talk but no action.
“The sad reality is that too many of us are drinking too much. The problem affects people in all walks of life. As alcohol has become relatively cheap, alcohol-related hospital admissions have quadrupled, and it is shocking that half of our prisoners now say they were drunk when they committed the offence. It is time for this to stop and I hope that this new piece of legislation will be a step forward to tackling this woeful relationship with drink.
“Minimum pricing is not a magic bullet – we need education and lots more as well, but there is widespread support for trying minimum pricing – from the medical profession, police forces, charities and from significant parts of the drinks and licensed trade industry.”
