Make drunks pay for getting tanked
CARNAGE. Total, complete and utter carnage.
When you look at the pictures of people out on the lash on New Year’s Eve, it’s like some kind of post-apocalyptic horror movie where everyone’s fighting, weeping, chucking up and surviving on a diet of kebabs.
The scenes captured in yesterday’s Daily Mirror are grim viewing. Of course most of us go a little too far on New Year’s Eve in search of a bit of fun. But – and I really don’t think this is my age showing - I see little fun in being carted off by the police utterly comatose or having your stomach pumped in A&E. And yet it is
this extreme drinking which has now become the norm in our country. Pre-loading with as much cheap booze as you can absorb before leaving the house has become accepted behaviour. And rather than a few glasses of wine or beer at the bar, there is now an emphasis on spirits, shots, chasers. It’s no longer about the social aspect of drinking, it’s the deeply unsocial aspect of getting completely battered as quickly as possible. If it were just New Year’s Eve it could possibly be written off as one night of wild abandon to end the year. But scenes such as these are playing out in towns and cities across the country every night of the year. More than 2.5million Brits merrily admit they will drink more in one day than the recommended weekly allowance. I’ve done it myself. But as yet, touch wood, I’ve not become a burden to our already overstretched public services.
Binge drinking is estimated to cost the taxpayer £4.9billion a year. About 15% of all attendances at A&E are related to alcohol.
Yes, some of this relates to people with mental health and alcohol addiction problems.
But plenty more of it is simply people who hold down decent jobs most of the week then choose to get completely rat-arsed on a weekend with the expectation that someone, somewhere, will pick them up when they’re drowning in their own vomit or rescue them from a fight.
People have to show some responsibility for their actions. Which is why I have nothing but admiration for NHS boss Simon Stevens as he considers introducing more drunk tanks to care for people who have overdone it, but without clogging up our hospitals.
What’s more I reckon those who use them should end up paying for them too. If you can afford 14 pints of Stella you can afford £50 towards the cost of some poor sod having to wash you down then prevent you choking to death.
As Mr Stevens points out, the NHS is not the National Hangover Service.
At present there are 16 such mobile drunk tanks – or booze buses – patrolling Britain. We could soon be seeing far more. Let’s hope so.
There seems little chance the British love of getting annihilated on a night out is ever going to end. In which case far better to monitor it... and monetise it.
They expect help as they drown in vomit