20 pint target for binge-drinkers
Tuesday April 20th, 2010
Many revellers in Britain's city centres plan to consume the equivalent of 20 pints of beer in an evening, researchers warn today.
The study of British night-life highlights the growing concern about the nation's binge-drinking culture - and its impact on health.
Researchers studied more than 200 revellers in Liverpool, Manchester and Chester in the north-west of England.
As
well as questioning people, researchers used breathalyser tests to work
out how much they had drunk.
They found that 51 per cent of those who admitted being drunk planned to drink even more - often staying out late to keep on piling in the drink.
And ten per cent said they hoped to consume the equivalent of 40 units of alcohol.
And telling people they had high levels of alcohol in the blood proved merely to encourage them to consume more, according to the findings reported in the journal Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy
The researchers from Liverpool John Moores University, UK, call for measures to be taken to discourage clubbers from excessive drinking.
Researcher Mark Bellis said: "Cities in the UK have adopted costly nightlife policing strategies aimed at protecting patrons from immediate alcohol-related harms by controlling violence and other anti-social behaviour.
"Implementing safety measures in nightlife environments is crucial to protecting public health, yet without reasonable efforts to reduce night-life alcohol consumption, such measures may simply result in safer environments for drunks."
Cross-sectional measures and modelled estimates of blood alcohol levels in UK nightlife and their relationships with drinking behaviours and observed signs of inebriation: Mark A Bellis, Karen Hughes, Zara Quigg, Michela Morleo, Ian Jarman and Paulo Lisboa: Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy (in press)
Tags: Drug and Alcohol Abuse | UK News
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