Should the government ban 24-hour drinking (again)?
Whilst tempting to raise both a glass and 2 fingers to the government’s pre-Christmas efforts to crackdown on binge drinking perhaps we should first ask whether it has gone far enough?
After all in June 2007 CMO for England Sir Liam Donaldson urged a review of the 24-hour licensing change.
In the same month researchers found that overnight visits to emergency departments for alcohol-related problems have almost tripled since 24-hour licensing laws were introduced
Is the government’s ban on ‘all you can drink’ promotions in pubs and bars in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted (or downing a glass of water, if you will, after half a dozen pints of Wifebeater)?
Other measures include ensuring that customers in supermarkets are not required to buy very large amounts of a product to take advantage of price discounts and ensuring that consumers are able to see unit content of all alcohol when they buy it.
All very laudable and perhaps odd, you might think, from a government which welcomed us with open arms to the wonderful world of 24/7 alcohol.
Should the government ban 24-hour drinking? Here’s why I don’t think it will.
When I was a crime correspondent in Exeter, Devon, in the mid 90s I accompanied the police on all manner of eye-opening operations, including patrolling the cathedral city’s streets at both pub and club chucking-out times.
What I witnessed was the madness of throwing the city’s most-inebriated population out on the streets from every licensed establishment at exactly the same time. Violence breeds violence and incredibly high police numbers at huge expense were required to deal with the phenomenon across the city at multiple locations at precisely the same times.
One of the few things 24-hour licensing achieved was the eradication of such flashpoints at 11.30pm and 1.30am (depending upon local licensing laws). However, whilst it made inroads into the ‘one-for-the-road’ culture of downing an actually-unwanted drink at last orders, it failed to do anything to tackle binge drinking.
Perhaps we should take a tip from Scandinavia and tax our alcohol so heavily it is prohibitively expensive to drink to excess instead?
