I’ve no idea whether they’ve been stocking it for ages or whether this is something new, but putting on my security-geek hat and thinking:

somebody is trying to stop me getting at cheap alcohol, what do I do?

The answers arrive as:

• spend money anyway and get into debt
• debase lemonade with blackmarket vodka / polish spirit and sell it at car-boot sales
• as-above, but with methanol / home-distilled product
• theft
• brew my own

The first four of these are unattractive and possibly bad for the economy; the latter at least can have a middle-class DIY/”The Good Life” gloss spun upon it – a bit like the 1970s but with fewer strikes.

Methanol poisoning sucks, though. What’s the cost to the NHS of a few people drinking some really nasty stuff (“to show them we can do what we want“) and barely surviving it, blinded, with pancreatitis and liver problems?