I'm not convinced. If you think it is then what would you suggest we do to combat it? Ideas being mooted recently include raising the drinking age to 21 , raising the price of alcohol, and not selling it in supermarkets. I'm not convinved any of these measures are workable or necessary. Neither am i convinved that parks are overun with kids with booze and half-bricks or city centres full of yoofs on vodka breaking teeth. It's all scare-mongering, older people are just as likely to be anti-social on the sauce and and no laws brought in will prevent youngsters from doing stuff they shouldn't anyhow. I think the problem's a more wider one of anti-social behaviour and no worse than it might've been ten or twenty years ago.
Find a...
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Are you some kind
of lazy journalist, gathering the opinions of the yooth?
yes
Isn't it more a question of health?
only when it costs the government more than they're earning from the tax.
we're probably getting there.
To the point
I have seen maybe 2 fights this year during a night out, the way my dad goes on he saw many per night.
But the thing with price raising, the govt. have got to realise that raising prices on addictive substances is NEVER a good idea.
.
http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2007/04/bingegirlREX_175x125.jpg
Yeah.
The whole concept of licensed premises and retailers has been opened up too much to make alcohol available pretty much everywhere. It's too easy to get hold of and a decent number of people have shown they're incapable of keeping their own consumption at a healthy level. Also, supposedly licensed retailers and premises, whilst subject to penalty if caught selling to minors, still have a difficult task in not doing so.
If you're not seeing the impact of alcohol on families, children, and overall culture, you're looking in the wrong places tbf.
But I agree that there is a general issue with anti-social behaviour that is not directly attributable to alcohol availability, and neither of these things is necessarily a new thing - though just because it's not new doesn't mean it can't be improved.
i think the problem lies in what constitutes as binge drinking.
For example, some weeks i might get through 2 bottles of red wine which i wouldn't think was much, but effectively that's categorised as binge drinking.
Other problems lie in underage drinking, which really is a problem
in what ways?
I don't see kids drinking in the street, i don't remember any of the grief i've gotten from drunks being from people underage, i think people generally go OTT with the whole thing. There's a health issue, yeah, but i think the idea that kids get pissed every night and then savage pensioners for their fish supper money isn't that realistic.
There're more streets out there
than your street.
I thought
Simba killed you. You bastard.
^Wins the thread
The Lion King is awesome.
and my cat is called Simba
in it honour.
A shining new era is tiptoeing nearer.
...
Only in shitty little podunk commuter towns were the kids and adults alike are both bored and stupid.
Hmmm.
So you think binge drinking isn't a problem in London?
something about
alcohol being the cause of the destruction of the working classes in the nineteenth century
alcohol has always, and will always be, in certain respects "a problem"
imho, it's not scaremongering, but neither is it as serious a problem as is made out. it's something to be aware of and maybe concerned about, but not in a state of "going to hell in a handcart" bullshittery
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: Yyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeessssssssss.
I tend to binge drink from time to time.
I don't drink overly regularly but when I do, I drink a lot, although I don't cause any problems except those to my own health.
I think the government emphasis on cutting down
is really ineffective. Trying to make people feel horrified about drinking one glass of wine a day (as in the latest tv advert) really isn't working for me.
I have drank alcohol, in pubs and outdoors, since I was 14. I caused damage to myself a few times, but never did anything really bad like you see in the 'binge drinking teen horror' stories! I only drank at weekends before I was 18, and not every weekend.
Now I drink about two or three nights a week. Occasionally I overdo it and feel bad. But I don't drink anywhere near as much as a lot of my friends, and I don't feel like I'm doing myself much long term harm. I might be, but the messages coming from government campaigners just don't seem to work. If I'm going to get ill and die early from drinking, isn't pretty much everyone else I know going to as well? I feel like there's bigger things to worry about.
I'm drunk right now
Out of it
A good book on this topic is Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication by Stuart Walton. His basic argument is that if you look at it historically people have always intoxicated themselves to excess and it is a basic biological human desire. It’s nothing new and people should be free to drink themselves silly if they want, it has positives as well as negatives.
Not a view you hear very often.