Prohibition and real life

Some MP's just cannot seem to grasp basic economics. If an article that people want costs too much and there's an alternative illegal or not, then guess what a lot of people will do? And when the government itself is the reason that an article costs too much and keeps coming up with wacky theories such as minimum pricing, then really they have no legitimate grounds to complain about the outcome.
Mail.

Smuggled alcohol costs the taxman more than £1billion a year - but no more than six criminals are prosecuted every year, MPs said last night.
Customs officials were lambasted last night for its lax enforcement regime which means just 20 people have been convicted for dodging alcohol tax over four years.
The failure by HM Revenue and Customs to take effective action against criminal gangs means the Treasury loses out to the tune of £1.2billion a year.
MPs on the powerful Public Accounts Committee said the department did not have good enough information about how effective it was at tackling the problem and failed to make the best use of intelligence and technology to detect and prevent evasion.
And the criticised the HMRC for having no idea about the extent of the tax gap for wine - making it impossible to target enforcement action against wine.MPs said they had been told criminals often export duty unpaid alcohol then redirect it back to the UK to sell.

This is essentially a problem of the governments own making, they're the ones who have progressively priced alcohol out of the reach of every day folk. They didn't take the lessons of American prohibition to heart which should have told them that making a legal product hard to get simply drives people into the hands of criminals. The thing is though, most people don't regard the 'white van man' who provides them with reasonably priced booze as a criminal so aren't inclined to report anyone involved with the trade. Indeed like my good self, a lot of people hop on the ferries to France and load up with several months supply of booze (and other nice stuff) because even taking the fuel and ferry costs into consideration, it's still cheaper than buying it in the shops.
So the problem is actually one of the governments own making, I suspect if they lowered the duty, they'd get more by way of taxation as the 'white van men' will no longer find it economic to do so. But sadly this will not occur to any of them, it's not in the mindset of politicians to use common sense.