Unhappy Hour?

Professor Sir Liam Donaldson's (the Government Chief Medical Officer) recommendation (following a similar idea from Scotland) that the minimum price of a unit of alcohol throughout the UK (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/4993299/Governments-top-doctor-recommends-price-hike-for-alcohol.html) seems broadly to chime with the attempt to 'price out' the negative health effects of chocolate. There is no doubt that alcohol (a fairly ubiquitous pretty non-specific drug) has considerable health effects in large numbers of people and these place considerable pressures on health services (e.g. liver transplants, broken ankles etc), police and court services (although the claimed link between alcohol and 'aggression' is not as simple as is being recently portrayed - alcohol does not convert choirboys into raging berzerkers!) and social services (dealing with marriage breakdown etc). My only concern is whether pricing is the appropriate way of dealing with these issues. I have some questions. What about the rather obvious fact that specifying a minimum price per booze unit will hit the poor to a much larger extent than the wealthy? I don't see any evidence that 'binge drinking' (something I seem to remember as being long the the British psyche, rather than being a recent 'invention') is less evident in the well-healed than those having modest means. How will the unit price be controlled when relatively massive amounts of alcohol can be brought in from abroad (again, perhaps, more so by well off folk)? What will be the situation with respect to 'home brewed' alcohol (that seems likely to take off again, if this recommendation is acted on) and how active will the police have to be (there will be expenses here) in relation to illegal distilling (which can have attendant dangers, due to impurities in the product)? Is this a case of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing?