Business trys to make profit - shock

I was reading an article in the Observer about drink companies looking to exploit the new licensing laws and thought I would throw down and opinion.
It is not a surprise that a company is looking to make a profit, it is probably good that they wish to share the profit with the staff who make it happen. My first concern is the idea that a few marketing tricks can be successful, why is it that people fall for tricks? In this case I guess it is easier than normal because the customer is drunk. Secondly, on a more general point, I do not accept that alcohol is the problem in these situations. The problem is the need people have for getting massively drunk on a regular basis. It is not surprise that people, at some point in their life, will get massively drunk, either by accident or design, the real concern is why people are so unhappy with their lives that they need to escape so often and to such a degree.

Finally, on the licensing laws themselves, one of the aims of the legislation is to reduce binge drinking and create a more continental style of drinking. To ensure this happened one could consider adding a small addition to the legislation; research suggests that the amount of seating in a pub affects the amount of drinking. In particular a marketing trick used by pubs is to limit the number of seats to pack as many people in as possible, this then increases the amount of alcohol consumed per person. To counter this we could add some calculation of seating ratios in to the granting of licenses to pubs. I would ensure that those that had a more generous supply of comfortable seating had more generous licenses. If a pub chooses to pack large numbers of people in to a small area I would restrict the license.

Ultimately we need to address the issues surrounding peoples need to be so drunk so often, in comparison to this licensing laws are trivial.