Policy Brief on Alcohol

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An alternative policy that I consider feasible is to limit the cups of alcoholic drink per person by pre-registered tokens, for example, a maximum of three cups of drinks per person during the holiday weekend with the token marked by names and is mandatory to use one when purchase a drink. This method improves some of the imperfections of the ‘half-strength beer’ strategy. Firstly, all alcoholic drinks including the stronger ones are now controlled because the token counts for the number of cups with all types of drinks included. Secondly, bars and restaurants will have lower costs incurred when comply with the policy. Previously with the ‘half-strength’ beer all businesses involved need to resettle the order with their supplier for the ‘special demand’ and it is also difficult to quantify the order because no one is experienced in estimating the demand under this irregular circumstance. If what they have ordered does not match to what they would sell there will be either shortages of supply or leftovers, neither of which is desirable nor efficient because these are not the regular products that they would offer. Therefore, uncertainty is the difficulty implementing ‘half-strength’ beer policy under the consideration of restaurants. Compared to that, our new proposal does not require drink menus from restaurants to modify at all and is thus easier to adapt to. Bars and restaurants only need to check the token now. To prevent the private exchanging of unused token we could print people’s names on it and at the time of purchase, token in use must be in accordance with the demonstration of a photo ID. To regulate even stricter, we could ask people to register the drinking token online in advance of the event so only those who will be drinking would take extra effort in registering and by doing this, they could plan what and when they will be drinking.

The social welfare we consider in this policy consists of the effectiveness on targeted group of heavy drinkers, utility change for moderate users and the revenue gained from sellers. The only ambiguous change is for sellers. The consumption per person is now limited so restaurants and bars may face a reduction in sales and revenue. But with better confidence in safety and order more people may be attracted to this celebration so number of potential customers will increase from the alcohol control and businesses will be benefited at the same time. The overall welfare change requires a design of the policy with more scrutiny but as long as revenue from sellers are ensured the limited cups policy is more preferred because it can be conducted with more certainty.

In conclusion, ‘half-strength’ beer policy is effective but not easy in conducting for restaurants and the control applied to beer only may undermine the overall outcome. But the idea of ‘limited cups’ is less costly for restaurants to cooperate with, which also keeps the original flavor for consumers and comes in a way to mentally ration the drinkers and make them plan their drinking