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To: Members of the Scotch Whisky Association and Diageo

Stop bullying Scotland over cheap booze

Save 300 Scottish lives a year: end your legal battle against the Scottish people's decision to set a healthy alcohol price.

Diageo and friends: you are putting your profits before people's lives.This is bullying, motivated by pure greed and it is costing us dear.

Until you and the other booze barons stop your undemocratic and lethal court challenges, we are mounting a nationwide boycott of your products.

Why is this important?

This week the booze industry is back in court AGAIN, challenging Scotland's law on cheap booze. Alcohol is 44% more affordable than it was 30 years ago. Super-strength cider sells in supermarkets for just over £1 a litre. Scotland's terrible alcohol problem costs the NHS £3.6 billion a year and 20 lives a week.

Scotland's law setting a minimum price for alcohol should be in place today - the legislation was passed with all-party support 20 months ago. But the booze giant Diageo and its friends in the Scotch Whisky Association have mounted legal challenge after challenge.

Doctors are unanimous that there is a link between price and alcohol abuse, especially among the young. So, in May 2012 Scotland passed a law with all-party support setting the minimum price at 50p a unit. A pint of standard lager would be £1.15, a bottle of white wine £4.50 and a bottle of spirits £14.

Evidence from Canada is that measures like this can drop the alcohol-related death rate by one-third.

Diageo makes £3.5bn profit a year - but its lust for even more is killing Scots, damaging teenagers and breaking up families. What it wants is the right to sell alcohol at any price it likes - even below the cost of manufacture, if that makes marketing sense.

We believe that nations have the right to regulate prices to save lives - especially in the middle of a health crisis that is unparalleled in Western Europe..

Boycott the booze barons! A list of whiskies involved in the legal challenge against minimum price is at http://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/members-brands/brands/
Diageo makes Smirnoff, Gordon's Gin, Guinness and 24 different whiskies.

More info on the health implications of super-cheap alcohol, and the savings in lives a minimum price could bring: http://www.alcohol-focus-scotland.org.uk/minimum-pricing

Latest news and comment on the legal battle: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ditching-diageos-drams-is-a-scots-duty-9101550.html

Scotland, United Kingdom

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2014-02-05 08:37:34 +0000

100 signatures reached

2014-02-03 18:57:24 +0000

50 signatures reached

2014-02-03 16:10:08 +0000

25 signatures reached

2014-02-02 20:43:04 +0000

10 signatures reached