Cultural Addiction

The news today that children are presenting to A and E departments drunk should surprise nobody. As alcohol continues to pervade our society, a new generation is now growing up in a world in which alcohol has been normalised. It is not acceptable now to be seen to be condoning smoking, especially in the aftermath of the smoking ban. Most people now seem to hold few reservations about marijuana and all the while, alcohol is seemingly omnipresent in our lives. Go to any Supermarket and you will see a skyscraper of booze the moment you walk through the front door being sold at a ludicrously cheap price. You will also see mountains of products dripping in sugar also being sold cheaply and still it remains unquestioned. The all powerful supermarket sector is catering to our every addiction and all the while, the cash strapped NHS is expected to pick up the tab. How does that work? Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this story of youngsters getting drunk is that their parents aren't even mentioned. I was led to believe that parents have a responsibility for the welfare and safety of their children until they've grown up (for clarity, I'm referring to the children). Of course, one of the problems is that alcohol has now crossed its final frontier in the last twenty odd years. It is now firmly ensconced in our homes and that is a big problem. There is now no peer group to witness how much you quietly put away as there once was down in the local pub. The volumes being drunk have risen dramatically although, interestingly, the amount admitted to being drunk and the amount which we know is sold don't marry up. This is no surprise of course since nobody drinking too much ever likes to admit it. Such is the nature of addiction. With the Welsh Government adopting a system of presumed consent for organ donation, the other home counties might have to follow suit sooner rather than later to cope with the escalating levels of liver failure in an increasingly younger age group. With no come back to the children involved or, more pertinently, their parents, this trend sadly looks set to stay as do the social problems it brings with it. The time is surely right to do the right thing and bring in minimum pricing on alcohol. For the majority who are in control of their drinking, this will be no problem but it might just provide a barrier to those most in need. There is now surely a moral argument to do this before the NHS starts to collapse under the strain. The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. Our current approach is now bordering on the insane and we badly need to take action.