Binge drinking.

As the pressure to sort out binge drinking grows stronger, David Cameron has described binge drinking as a “scandal” as it costs the NHS £2.7bn a year.

To try and solve the issue, 10 new radical ‘solutions’ have been suggested. These include enforcing a minimum price for alcohol, raising the legal drinking age, discouraging rounds at the pub (which put pressure on to have another drink) and banning alcohol marketing.

Another is the suggestion that children who see their parents drinking often think it is normal to drink heavily. This is pretty believable because they are teaching their children the ways of the world and the best ways to behave. 

The most interesting solution however, is to stop exaggerating the problem. The argument is that 2010 NHS statistics show that 55% of 11-15 year olds have never had any alcohol - which is very different to what the media and anti-drinking groups would have us believe. This exaggeration may lead to young people using “everyone’s doing it” as an excuse, meaning it could make the problem worse.

I’m not sure about some of the other solutions, but I think it would help if we stopped being over-the-top about the number of young people drinking alcohol. Sure, binging does still happen, but there are more sensible young people out there than the media give Britain credit for.

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