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18 OCTOBER 2007
MIDDLE CLASS DRINKING SPARKS CONCERN
UPFRONT, news, night online, COMMENTS
The public health minister Dawn Primarolo has said that Britain's drinking culture "has to change" after new research revealed that people in middle class areas are more likely to consume too much alcohol.
A government-commissioned study found that people in affluent suburbs were more likely to consume "hazardous" amounts of alcohol.
It singled out Surrey towns in which more than one-in-four adults drink too much, with the lowest rate of hazardous drinkers in poorer areas, such as east London.
While the south had steady drinkers, the north had a higher proportion of heavy drinkers and the biggest numbers of alcohol-related hospital admissions.
There were 8.8 per cent of harmful drinkers in Manchester, compared to 3.2 per cent in Winchester and West Devon.
The researchers warned that harmful drinking is putting pressure on the health service due to an increase in long-term conditions such as liver disease and cancer.
Professor Mark Bellis, director of the North West Public Health Observatory, which carried out the research, said discussions had been too focused on binge drinking.
"Across England around one-in-five adults are drinking enough to put their health at significant risk and one-in-twenty enough to make disease related to alcohol consumption practically inevitable," he said.
"We need to tackle binge drinking and all the short-term social and health consequences associated with such behaviour.
"However in order to stop further increases in alcohol-related deaths and admission to hospital, we must also reverse the tolerance that most communities have built up by simply consuming too much alcohol on a weekly basis."
The figures also give details on alcohol-related hospital admissions, and public health minister Dawn Primarolo stressed that they did not include casualty figures.
She said most of the people admitted "are not young people, they are 'everyday' drinkers who have drunk too much for too long. This has to change".
Pointing to a "cross-government alcohol strategy" launched in June, she said: "The chancellor announced that a new national priority for the NHS will be to reduce the rate of hospital admissions of alcohol-related conditions, as part of the spending review announcement last week."
She argued that the government had reduced alcohol-related violence and had launched a public information campaign to promote sensible drinking, as well as a review of alcohol pricing and a crack down on retailers who sell to underage drinkers.
From: NIGHT Online
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