💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 1983.gmi captured on 2021-12-05 at 23:47:19. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
One in 10 people on a night out plan to binge-drink, a study in the north-west
of England has found.
Researchers from Liverpool John Moores University questioned more than 200
drinkers in Manchester, Liverpool and Chester on Friday and Saturday nights.
Ten per cent of them said they planned to drink more than 40 units of alcohol
by the time they went home.
Mark Bellis, who led the study, said the UK had an "established culture of
heavy drinking in nightlife settings".
Researchers carried out a series of interviews, breath tests and assessments of
their subjects' levels of drunkenness, such as slurred speech and ability to
walk.
When interviewed, half the people said they were drunk and just over half (51%)
of those planned to carry on drinking.
From the overall sample, 80% said they intended to drink more before returning
home, with one in 10 (15% of men and 4% of women) believing their total alcohol
intake would be more than 40 units before going to sleep.
'Little information'
At the time of the interview, one in five men (20%) and 21% of women had
already drunk more than their weekly recommended alcohol intake (21 units for
men and 14 for women).
More than one in five men (21%) were expecting to have been drinking for more
than 12 hours by the time they returned home.
Researchers found that drinking at home before a night out and drinking later
into the night "may be associated with higher levels of drunkenness in city
centres."
They also noted that drinkers who planned to stay out due to extended opening
hours were the ones intending to drink the most.
Professor Bellis said: "The UK has a well-established culture of heavy drinking
in nightlife settings.
"Despite this, there is relatively little information available on drunkenness,
with laws restricting sales of alcohol to drunk individuals being largely
ignored.
"Cities in the UK have adopted costly nightlife policing strategies aimed at
protecting patrons from immediate alcohol-related harms by controlling violence
and other anti-social behaviour.
"Implementing safety measures in nightlife environments is crucial to
protecting public health, yet without reasonable efforts to reduce nightlife
alcohol consumption, such measures may simply result in safer environments for
drunks."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/8631099.stm
Published: 2010/04/20 01:46:48 GMT