THERE goes another Bank Holiday and with it a queue of people who will have spent much of the weekend having their booze-related bumps and bruises tended to in casualty.
Health Service Journal (Aug 26) suggests that we should call time on the young binge drinkers who stumble into A&E at weekends having “drunk their own bodyweights in alcopops and chasers”.
HSJ says the NHS spends £500 million a year on alcohol-related A&E attendances and ambulances, while 12 per cent of inpatient costs stem from the demon drink. And experts are predicting worse to come, when all those lager-fuelled young lads and ladettes begin to suffer chronic booze-related illnesses in later life.
Not surprisingly, hospitals are getting a little tired of post-pub pools of vomit and abusive patients and are hitting back. The Royal Liverpool University Hospital, for instance, keeps drinkers in overnight and refers them in the morning to a nurse specialising in alcohol misuse. And anyone who pitches up drunk at St Mary’s in London is treated, screened and counselled on the possible consequences of their drinking. Professor Robin Touquet, a St Mary’s A&E consultant, says: “Binge drinking is getting worse, particularly among women. The emancipation of women has meant that the bad things as well as the good have been emancipated.”
But it’s old-fashioned vanity that is the focus of a new campaign to reduce binge drinking among women, says The Daily Telegraph (Aug 26). Funded by the drinks industry to promote “responsible drinking”, the campaign says that excessive alcohol can damage your looks as well as your health. Featuring a spoof cosmetic, it says that even “Masq Creme de Regret” can not hide the broken veins and bloodshot eyes that lie at the bottom of an empty bottle.