What do we do about alcohol?

[Workingman]

We hear of incidents by drunken louts every day, from ruining public events to beating the hell out of some stranger, now the latest is flight disturbances by drunken passengers. Lives are being ruined by this stuff. It seems that alcohol has always been with us, but in the modern world its effects have run out of control.

When I was a young man it was only available from certain outlets and at certain times. Now it is everywhere and available at any time - 24/7. Those who did drink heavily, and they were mostly to be seen at weekends, still behaved with some sort of decorum, if a drunk can have decorum, but that was down to a general standard of better behaviour.

Today people have difficulty with relating to others and there is an element of "me" being the centre of the universe. If "myself" is not getting my own way I am going to kick off - big time. Throw in a few double vodkas and that kicking off becomes unrestrained violence.

I do not really have a clue what to do about it all. Putting up the price of alcohol so that it is prohibitively expensive is not the answer because there are other things making it such a problem, and why hit the many to control the few? Maybe if the punishments for alcohol disorder reflected a zero tolerance of such behaviour it would be a start.

[Suff]

Personally what I do about alcohol is buy it and drink it.

Now if we are talking about what to do about people who abuse alcohol and cause problems because of it, as in your last paragraph, then we're talking about something else.

The whole problem is backwards as usual. Person uses gun to kill people. Ban the gun. Person uses knife to kill people, ban the knife. Person abuses alcohol, raise the price of alcohol and punish everyone who likes a drink.

About time we started punishing the abusers heavily. Really heavily. Then we might get somewhere.... But our countries "elite" is stuck in some kind of Rotherham ish PCesqe nightmare where saying and doing the right thing are wrong and acting like a complete idiot and saying things that a 5 year old can work out is wrong seems to be the norm.

Start from the top and start sacking politicians, council members, mayors, police commissioners, until people start to realise that we need to do something which works. Rather than "saying" something which does not.

I'm going to break my teeth if I go on so I'm going to watch some media on my new toy....

[TheOstrich]

"Back in the day", I think it would be fair to say that young people didn't have either the opportunity or the inclination to drink to oblivion in the same way that the current generation of young people does. Heavy drinkers (probably most drinkers in practice) were from the older generation - would you agree? Additionally, there weren't the huge number of night clubs and drinking dens around our city centres today attracting young people - and these have proliferated as pubs have closed. Go back to the 1970's when I was that age and you could count the number of "popular teen/young folk nightclubs" in the centre of Birmingham on one hand. Nowadays there's streetfuls of them, the whole of the Broad Street entertainment quarter for starters. The availability of booze is that much greater.

With young people, there is naturally less restraint and less decorum. So inevitably, more rat-a****d characters picking fights on the streets.

As for what you do about it - only stiffer punishment for public behaviour offences and withdrawal of liquor licences for offending proprietors. As a related example, tonight on BBC Migrants Today, there was a report of children playing chicken running in front of HGVs. A clip from a dashcam in a truck showed a 14yo being struck and bowled over on a main road outside Penkridge, Staffs. He was lucky - he survived with an ankle injury and was taken to hospital. The report concluded by saying that the police "took no further action" again him. THAT is where it goes wrong - he should have been up in front of a juvenile court to answer for his actions.

[cromwell]

When I was a young man it was only available from certain outlets and at certain times. Now it is everywhere and available at any time - 24/7.

I think this is important. Whoever thought 24 hour licensing was a good idea needs locking up. To justify this unlovely madness they even invented a new phrase "the night-time economy".

Unlovely vomit fest more like it. There is no good reason for anyone to be boozing at 3 in the morning.

The downside of alcohol can be alleviated very easily. Pubs to open 11 am - 2pm and 5pm-11pm; only exceptions Christmas Eve, News Years Eve. Nightclubs to shut at 1am and the number of nightclubs to be strictly limited. Number of nightclubs to be decided by the police, not the local council.

Outside that, booze to be sold only at bottle shops, not supermarkets. Heavier punishments for public drunkenness. Sorted!

[Workingman]

Cromwell, it is not only the availability of alcohol, it is the attempted change in social mores - a governmental thing.

It will be very hard to undo the Latin European experiment of street cafes and drinking at any hour. The night-time economy was invented to show that we were as responsible re alcohol as our Latin cousins in the south. Unfortunately the northern Europeans have a different mentality when alcohol is concerned.

The Genie is out of the bottle and it will be hard to put it back. In the meantime hitting those who step outside what is acceptable behaviour with very punitive punishments has to be the way to go. I have no sympathy whatsoever for them, and no excuses by them should carry any weight. They freely do what they do and should expect no leeway from the Courts.

[victor]

booze is not the problem,it's people

i could drink -if i wanted to-from bars that are open at 6 A.M to bars that are open til 2/3 A.M--but there is'nt a drink/drunk problem here

[Aggers]

None of you have mentioned what I consider to be the main reason why drinking
has become such a serious problem today. it is because we now live in an affluent
society and people, especially the young, have more money to spend than we had.

When I was a schoolboy I was given no regular pocket money, although I did occasionally
get a few coppers taking back my father's bottles to the local pub. When I started work
at ten shillings a week gross, 8s/6d net, I gave my mother 7s and kept 1s/6d pocket money.
Admittedly beer was only 4d a pint then, but I did have to buy my own clothes , so I couldn't
afford to get drunk.

Today money is more freely available. Something has to be done to control things.

[Workingman]

Another good reason for the way things are today Aggers, but would we want to go back to those times?

We have to deal with today, and we are not doing that.

[Aggers]

would we want to go back to those times?
We have to deal with today, and we are not doing that.

Yes, we should deal with the problem - the sooner the better.

Do we want to go back to those times? I wouldn't mind.

[medsec222]

I wouldn't mind either Aggers. I feel nostalgic every time I watch Call the Midwife. Times were harder then, but where the people nicer? Somehow I think they were.