Do we need new drinking rules?

As a nation we’re drinking more than ever – and it’s causing health and social problems. Is it time to bring in measures to curb our alcohol intake?

Yes
Binge drinking among women has almost doubled to 15 per cent since 1998, while 23 per cent of men are bingeing, revealed recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (a binge means double the recommended safe limit of two to three units for women, three to four for a man). And the increase is having a huge impact on our health. Alongside liver cirrhosis, which has caused an eight-fold rise in deaths among men aged 35 to 44, and a seven-fold rise in deaths among women of the same age, it’s linked with everything from depression to obesity. Women could be particularly at risk. ‘Studies suggest women are more prone to liver disease after a shorter period of heavy drinking,’ says Chris Sorek, chief executive of Drinkaware, a charity funded by the drinks industry to help people make informed decisions about alcohol. ‘Alcohol can also affect your chances of conceiving and can lead to an increased risk of breast cancer.’ And according to Alcohol Concern, alcohol misuse is the reason for 200 hospital admissions every day.
‘But alcohol has never been cheaper or more available,’ says Professor Ian Gilmore of the Royal College of Physicians. ‘Alcohol is not soap powder – it’s a dangerous drug and it shouldn’t be used as a sales product,’ he says. A Sheffield University report revealed that a mere 50p minimum price rise would reduce annual alcohol related deaths by 3393 and result in 296,900 fewer sick days.
But it’s not just the price we need to think about. Gilmore believes that clearer labelling on alcohol would also help. A YouGov poll last year found 77 per cent of adults did not even know how many units there were in a glass of wine.
Gilmore denies increasing prices, labelling and offering smaller glass sizes are nannying. ‘We are talking of reduced consumption by one to two litres per head, not prohibition,’ he says. ‘The aim is to bring it back to where it was 20–30 years ago.’

No
David Poley, chief executive of industry-led alcohol responsibility body the Portman Group, believes none of those measures would make a difference to the binge drinking problem. ‘Price and other factors are not what’s behind our heavy drinking culture,’ he says. Poley claims we should be looking to the social factors that are driving people to drink more. ‘By increasing the buying costs, we are merely covering up the social problems we face,’ he argues.
Comparing the UK to other countries demonstrates the cultural factors at play, he says. ‘Southern Europe, where alcohol is easily available and cheaper than here, doesn’t suffer the same problems with alcohol as the UK,’ Poley points out. ‘Conversely, in Scandinavia, where alcohol is more expensive, they have similar or even worse alcohol and social problems than us.’
Poley also believes that by increasing the price of alcohol we run the risk of alienating lower wage earners, resulting in alcohol becoming an upper class commodity. ‘Price-fixing would simply hit the pockets of hard-working families who are already struggling to cope with rising food and fuel bills amid the economic downturn,’ he says. He believes that other measures, such as restricting availability and raising the legal purchase age to 21, would do nothing but demonise alcohol, destroying healthy attitudes to drinking even further.
We need to look beyond surface steps, believes Professor Mark Bellis of the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University. ‘We should be making sure young people are taught to drink responsibly, rather than hiding away in parks getting drunk,’ he says. Providing safer public spaces and more alternatives to our pub culture would also help, he believes.

Healthy verdict
There’s no denying our heavy boozing culture is affecting our health. But while measures such as increasing prices and labelling units more clearly could have some impact, it seems our drinking culture is deeply ingrained – and perhaps in reality that’s what we need to look to if we really want to make a difference.

Words: Laura Cillo