Alcohol. It’s an entity that many students hold close to their heart, and often a little too close for comfort. Although partaking in more than the occasional tipple myself, I would distance myself from the term “binge drinker” as I know most students would. This is even though the number of drinks the average student has in a week would probably read like Lindsay Lohan’s daily shopping list, and not the ‘occasional Smirnoff Ice’ that we tell our parents.
Recently, steps have been introduced by the government to curb this excessive drinking culture that seems to be particular to the UK, but my God, what minor steps they are. If they were represented in physical form by the band Steps, Lisa Scott Lee would have a gap tooth and only one arm and H would be a chimpanzee – simply pointless and generally harmful to the eye. So what actually are these steps?
Well, on paper they seem beneficial and proactive about clamping down on binge drinking. The plan is to raise the minimum price for a unit of alcohol, with the general consensus being, at least for now, to have a set minimum of 21 pence per unit of beer and 28 pence per unit of spirits. With researchers at Sheffield University estimating last year that raising the minimum price of alcohol would mean after a decade there would be almost 3,000 fewer deaths every year and 41,000 fewer cases of chronic illness, this can only seem like a good idea.
However, the researchers estimated these figures using the minimum unit price as 50 pence, not 21 pence or 28 pence. In other words, and excuse the pun here folks, the government have bottled out of it. Health campaigners and those not interested in alcohol solely for the cheap thrills it lends have agreed that this will, by and large, have no effect on the vast majority of cheap drinks sold in supermarkets.
It appears the government are attempting not to make another empty promise (in their coalition agreement, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives both pledged to ban the sale of alcohol below cost price), but what good is keeping to promises when the real issue is still at hand anyway? If binge drinking has become so bad in the UK that if it was reduced, crime and illness would also fall quite dramatically, so why attempt to prevent it with the most timid excuse for a solution ever? “Sure,” they will say as they shrug their shoulders,”It’s a step in the right direction.” Whilst that’s probably more than the inebriated can take, it isn’t really good enough.
Even the idea of raising the minimum price per unit doesn’t particularly address the root of the problem – has anyone ever asked why, as a nation, we drink so excessively? It’s not really because alcohol can be bought cheaply, otherwise everyone would be binging on Freddos like frog obsessed lunatics.
There is a deeper reason behind all of this, a mental attitude that has formed in our culture. It isn’t even to do with education, because nearly everyone realises that too much alcohol is a bad thing for you, or else they soon will the day after. Therefore, our love hate relationship with alcohol must stem more from the idea of drinking as a pass time or social activity, and it subsequently being unsociable not to “have a few” when going out in the evening with friends.
This can sometimes develop to more than a few, not only because of alcohol’s ability to induce confidence, but also because of the belief many people have in its properties to “make” a night out. Consequently, a simple hike in prices can’t cure the deep-seated mindset of many, even if the minimum price is 50 pence a unit, and until the government realise this I’m afraid the problems of alcohol, much like that dreaded hangover, will not be going away anytime soon.