Tackling binge drinking? What's to tackle?

In his latest exhibition of gesture politics, Little Lord Fauntleroy (David Cameron) has announced that he's going to tackle binge drinking by slapping a minimum price on a unit of alcohol. He's played it to the gallery where his audience of Daily Mail readers are nodding along in synchronized unison that this is just what's needed to sort out our streets.

Of course it's all bollocks. A minimum price per unit wouldn't have deterred Cameron and the rest of his thuggish Bullington Club mates from getting slaughtered and smashing up restaurants, and it won't deter anyone else. But the Daily Mail readers are loving the idea, so it's job done in the short term.

But the real question which needs to be asked isn't how should we tackle binge drinking, but should we even try?

James Naughtie of Radio 4's The Today Programme astonished me yesterday when talking about the subject by saying something along the lines of "binge drinking is a new phenomenon of the last decade." Really? I can certainly remember many enjoyable binge nights during my youth in the 1980s. And I am guessing Mr Naughtie has never seen William Hogarth's 'Beer Street' and 'Gin Lane' prints of 1751, or read Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' written in the 14th Century, which is essentially the story of one long piss up.


Binge drinking is a right of passage for many millions of people around the world. It's something which even animals do. Check out YouTube which is full of amusing footage of elephants, bears, monkeys, goats and other animals happily getting smashed on fermenting fruit. Binge drinking is natural and normal for many, but not all, people and the majority of the time it causes no problems for the people doing it, or those around them.

The real issue isn't actually the consumption of large quantities of alcohol in a short period of time, the real issue is what the person does during and after the consumption. Some people (like me) become cartoon characters of themselves, spreading the love and having a harmless and entertaining (for others) good time. But some other people turn nasty, violent and behave in a way which isn't nice at all. This is where the real issue lies.

So with that in mind, why should somebody like me, who has never caused a problem while drunk in my life, be lumped in and punished along with the arseholes? And why should all those nice Daily Mail readers also be forced to pay the price?

Blaming alcohol and raising prices because of the behaviour of a minority is wrong. It punishes everyone for the acts of a few. It's like trying to reduce road deaths by raising road tax. Completely illogical and misplaced. What needs to be tackled is the way SOME people behave in an anti-social way when drunk. How do you do that? I don't know. But I do know what a minimum price per unit will have absolutely no effect whatsoever.