±«Óătv

Considering the generosity of ±«Óătv hospitality (not the best in the industry but certainly not the worst), this all seems very ironic.

It is my feeling that, in order to control the drinking problem, not only in the United Kingdom, but in the world as a whole, is to treat it as a disease. It is very tragic to see someone who was in the prime of his (or her) life having their life snuffed out by alcohol. It is high to me, that we as a nation, start to realise that alcohol is a drug and start to license it as such. I feel that, in order to treat alcohol-related cases, the people who do the drinking realise that is is a disease and can be controlled. Places like alcoholics annomyous or alconon have had success with their programmes in the states, so why not see if they could work in the United Kingdom? Isn't it worth a try, instead of throwing money that the NHS could be using for other programmes (like hiring more nurses)? I feel that it is worth at the very least a good try to see if the other treatment options work 1st before spending more and more money, only to see the people go out and drink more heavily.

The NHS shouldn't be judging what people do or have done to decide whether to treat them for free or not. Drinkers are less dangerous than smokers (no passive drinking) and just as irresponsible as someone who cycles dangerously, jogs along a rail track or drives when too tired to do so. The issue of transplants should be one of priorities and merit (health, age, etc). The NHS should be run on the basis of solidarity, not competition between providers or users.

There should be payment to the hospital for injuries caused by the individual's excessive drinking. Certainly it could the individual could be identified and his bank account debited if he refuses. This "freedom" to abuse themselves as well as abusing hospital staff and the local community must stop. What a waste of tax payers' money when there are so many other urgent needs in the NHS. Time to pay if people cannot learn self control.

Both the drink industry and NHS has to play their own part in this area by given a helping hand to the patient and the drink industry should have a limite in the production of alcohol because it has become a thing of live and death in the society today. The rate of liver and kidney disease thesedays, almost 67% is caused by alcoholic drink, so something have to be done about it before it get out of hand. from sunmaku in kogi state Nigeria.

The NHS shouldn't be judging what people do or have done to decide whether to treat them for free or not. Drinkers are less dangerous than smokers (no passive drinking) and just as irresponsible as someone who cycles dangerously, jogs along a rail track or drives when too tired to do so. The issue of transplants should be one of priorities and merit (health, age, etc). The NHS should be run on the basis of solidarity, not competition between providers or users.

Where do you stop when assessing for damage/injury caused by some action of the patient.

People carelessly cross the road and are run over. Should they be left on the road and not treated because they did not pay enough attention. You will say 'Ah but it was an accident'. But it was an avoidable accident. The patient caused it by their actions.

Hill walkers fall and need to be rescued and then treated. Should they be left to die because they caused the accident by participating in a dangerous activity.

I view drinking as an activity with risks. It is no different from other dangerous activities. None of them need to be done. I have decided that those risks are acceptable. But I have also paid for the NHS through my taxes and I expect to be treated if I need to be.

Where do you stop once you start down this road?

This is a tremendously difficult area.

We ALL tend to enjoy a drink - some more than others. However, I do think we should be responsible for our actions.

Sadly, some people do not possess the good sense to know when 'enough is enough' and it is not all down to intelligence. Even those of us who would appear to be blessed with some degree of intelligence (i.e. the ability to know what is sensible drinking and what is not), still regularly over-step the mark.

I know we are all supposed to be equal but those who should know better, should pay for their treatment and those who are not so blessed should be helped to overcome their habit. But it's not that simple of course.

A good start would be to stop all advertising for alcoholic drinks on TV. Not the ideal solution of course, but a start.

Best Wishes
Jack Blakemore Wirral, Merseyside.

At last a programme to deal with this 'problem' have felt for a long time and discussed it amongst my friends, that those who end up in the NHS A&E departments resulting from alcohol excess should be invoiced for their treatment.
Why should I a tax payer have to subsidise those people who of their owen free will drink to much.
The NHS managers with A&E departments should be shouting from the roof tops for hem to be able to issue invoices for the treatments given.

My name is Howard Jones my wife is Irene,we can remember when the age for being allowed in the pub was 21,I was old enough but she was only 18 we had to wait untill she was 21 before we went out for a drink,we allways drin in moderation we are fit and active we now live in Malta you can drink here when you like but we dont I am now76 and my wife is 73 I think that speaks for it's self

Alcoholism is an illness. It is very indiscriminate and people do not become alcoholic for a reason or through choice. Alcoholics can recover given the right help. They are not to blame for being alocholics any more than those with diabetes are to blame for being diabetics. Of course the NHS should pay to treat them. We should be moving to marginalise consumption of alcohol as we are moving to marginalise smoking. If tobacco and alcohol had not been discovered until recently, they would both be class A drugs.

As a recovering alchoholic (sober for 33 years) I can tell you that putting the price up or restricting sales will not work.
The answer is education, education, education,prove to our young children the damage over indulgence can have on their health, it's working with smoking!why not booze.

Alcoholism is an illness, and it is a shame that there is so much ignorance about it. People do not become alcoholics for a reason or through choice. It is not a question of “stopping when they’ve had enough”. For an alcoholic, one drink is too many and a thousand is not enough! Alcoholics Anonymous is alive and well in the UK and tens of thousands of people have recovered through its 12-step programme. Unfortunately the medics don’t understand how it works, so by and large they don’t promote it, despite the fact that it is now a vital part of the Government’s alcohol strategy.

Alcoholics are not bad people needing to become good, they are sick people needing to get well. They are no more responsible for their illness than a diabetic is responsible for his diabetes. Of course they should be treated on the NHS. Perhaps the long-term answer is to marginalise alcohol the same way that society is now marginalising tobacco. Let’s face it, if neither of them had been discovered until very recently, they would both be classified as class A drugs.

Alcoholism is an illness, and it is a shame that there is so much ignorance about it. People do not become alcoholics for a reason or through choice. It is not a question of “stopping when they’ve had enough”. For an alcoholic, one drink is too many and a thousand is not enough! Alcoholics Anonymous is alive and well in the UK and tens of thousands of people have recovered through its 12-step programme. Unfortunately the medics don’t understand how it works, so by and large they don’t promote it, despite the fact that it is now a vital part of the Government’s alcohol strategy.

Alcoholics are not bad people needing to become good, they are sick people needing to get well. They are no more responsible for their illness than a diabetic is responsible for his diabetes. Of course they should be treated on the NHS. Perhaps the long-term answer is to marginalise alcohol the same way that society is now marginalising tobacco. Let’s face it, if neither of them had been discovered until very recently, they would both be classified as class A drugs.

Iam SADIKI Chimanuka,from drc kinshasa. As for me! I think that alchoholic is a big problem in africa for all the young people, because when I see the last young generations ! I notice that in the future we will be in limbo.we don't prepare our future, we drink and drink without thinking about our future generations.My advise is that the young people sould stop smoking and drinking. please tell me what mean " URL ".

sincerely yours

Sadiki Chimanuka.

This is a tough question. With so many toxins in our air, food and water these days, how do we punish the beverage industry and not the commercial food producers, chemical and pharmaceutal industries and producers of flouride used in water treatment? The manufacturers of toxic vaccines, like the distillers, brewers and pothouses get richer without thought for the victims, and I would suspect that deaths caused directly, or inderectly, by toxins other than alchohol is vastly greater in number yet is Dow Chemical closed? No. Are Merck and Monsanto charged for deaths and damage brought on by their products? No. Is the water treatment facility sued for toxins used in making your water 'safe'? No.
Start with the number one killer and work your way down, not the other way 'round.

i personally think that neither business, states or parents should be blame. we have to stop blaming others , they know that drinking is bad for their health so why do they still doing it and they want to blame others it is too irresponsible. the solution is not to reduce or increase drinking age or price neither to introduce new legislation , it is about time they take responsibility of their acts.

It is surprising that despite the focus on harm related to alcohol, people are still ignorant about the real facts.

I manage the charity, Drug and Alcohol Action Programme which focuses on educating people about alcohol, drug and Khat issues. For the second year running, Paul Watson has lent his support to our DRINK SENSE campaign that aims to educate all diverse communities in Ealing about sensible drinking, alcohol addiction and related issues leading up to Christmas and the New year - the festive time of advertising frenzy for people to buy and
 drink more alcohol!

‘Rain in my heart’ which is shown as an educational tool during the campaign provides a shocking and sobering reminder to viewers of what addiction can do to the individual, the family and the community.

People from all backgrounds can and do have an alcohol addiction. Looking at the campaigns on sensible drinking/knowing your limits funded by the ±«Óătv Office and the drinks industry , one would be forgiven for thinking that it is only an affliction that affects the white ethnic groups. No information is available in different languages and neither are specific vulnerable groups targeted. Research shows that many older men and younger women from the South Asian communities are vulnerable groups. There is also a corresponding increase in alcohol addiction amongst other minority ethnic communities.

Yet it takes local campaigns like ours – DRINKSENSE- on a shoe string budget to produce facts and information in several languages including Polish, Somali, Urdu and Punjabi so that all diverse communities can be educated.

It is stated that ‘prevention is better than cure’. In order to avoid the horrendous costs to the NHS and to our social infrastructure, the government and the drinks industry must focus on educating all communities. Further, there must be better accessible support and interventions if we are to tackle alcohol addiction and all the related issues that go with it effectively.

Perminder Dhillon
Drug and Alcohol Action Programme

The first point for consideration in this debate is the fact that alcohol is a drug,ethyl-alcohol or ethanol (its molecular formula is variously represented as EtOH, CH3CH2OH, C2H5OH). It is a legal drug to which many people become addicted. It is Western society's drug-of-choice. The makers of alcohol, the distillers and brewers, should help fund the health resources and treatment centres for alcohol addiction, since it is the manufacturers who gain most from the sale of alcohol, along with the licensed vintners and the off-license trade. Alcoholism is a disease-syndrom & should be treated as such by society. But society can be hypocritical and engage in mass 'denial' of the problem.

A slightly higher tax on alcohol could be used to fund the NHS for treating alcohol related illnesses but this won't make the problem disappear as it lies on each individual especially on those who are either psychologically or physically dependent on the drug.

Alcoholic's need treatment as much as any other addicts.

As with tobacco, people should be made aware of the risks related to alcohol through media and labels on bottles. A change in behaviour won't happen overnight. But we might learn/think more about our own limits and behaviour so that one day those who drink excessively will be able to recognise that its time to push the alarm button.

Alcohol should be taxed at the same rate as tobacco. That would make a pint of spirits in the neighborhood 25 to 30 Gr. Brit Pounds. I know of no one thaat has died from sclerosis of the liver smoking nor have I read any information that people that had bee or are smoking causing disastrous automobile accidents.

why not what - symptom not causal

latch-key children ( or children of parents as good as absent by being drunk or drugged themselves ) of any
socio-economic background might feel emotionally neglected

continued absence of appropriate attention from responsible parents ( i.e. motivated by unconditional love ) can soon persuade a childs undeveloped mind that nobody really
loves him ( bribes and treats can work - but at a relatively superficial level ? )or cares much for their emotional well-being

( a child's cerebral cortex is not sufficiently developed to properly comprehend that absentee parents are working to give him a ' better life ' however many times it may be told )

latch-key children can experience subconscious fear at having to fend for themselves both emotionally and physically at possibly too yound an age ; however, they will not yet have the intellectual tools to protest in an effective way - and may anyway pretend to be tougher than they are

( but often displaying such grateful affection for the at last returning parent , who in turn is flattered into thinking all is well , the parents themselves might know realise any potential long-term damage done in deserting their children )

these children can subsequently grow up not properly caring about themselves - still less about society at large - and might stop-gap heart-ache and lingering fears of being unworthy of unconditional love ( dutch courage ) with immoderate use of drink or drugs

( possibly compounded by the absence of religeon/ spiritual guidance etc )

some teenagers habtual drink and drug abuse can mean they do not develope appropriate emotional muscle in learning to effectively deal with emotional issues at this crucial ' safe ' time while under their parents protection

in some cases , these children might be disincentivised to study( perhaps also destabilising the classroom )
because their minds have already found finer but ultimately false harbours in which to reside

later on in life, this in turn might make any kind of problem resolution within marriage or work-related issues too challenging - and could
thereby cause family break-up where of course the viscious circle can continue

my motto : always drink when you want to - not because you have to

The majority of people in this country enjoy a drink, act responsibly and are not a burden on the health system. Those that find themselves in need of treatment should be able to access medical assistance as long as the government of the day offers a National Health system. It is unreasonable to discriminate against any type of illness, where do you draw the line. Many of the posts on this site have been about addiction, but you do not need to be an addict to suffer an alcohol related illness or disease.
For those that do suffer addiction we need to start addressing the reasons why people turn to alcohol and what support and programmes need to be put in place at an early stage to ease the potention burden on the system. We also need to better educate young people about the effects of alcohol on their health, their personality and their safety. With the increased amount of home drinking many young people are exposed at an early age to alcohol - both the benefits of social occasions such as home celebrations and dinner parties and unfortunately in some cases the excesses that contribute to the burden on the health system. There is a responsibility on both parents and the government to provide this education and to increase the emphasis within the National Curriculum on this subject. It is a complex social issue that will not be resolved by withdrawing medical assistance to those in need.
In answer to the question should the drinks industry play a part in this treatment, they already do. They make a massive contribution to the Government in the form of taxes and duty. They raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for various charities including those that help educate and treat people with drink related problems.
The drinks industry is Global, would we ask the French wine producers to help pay for somebody who was unfortunate enough to get liver disease from drinking Champagne, or the Mexican producers for those that over indulge on Tequila?

There is some confusion here between addiction and stupidity.
Alcoholism = disease: treat the patient.
Bad behaviour after binge drinking = stupidity: take away their drinking licence.
NHU treating addiction: good use of the funding.
NHU replacing my liver if I ruin it: no case for funding.

A person cannot choose to stop having a disease, like the flue or measles. Someone can choose to stop drinking. It may be a difficult thing to do - especially for heavy drinkers - but it can be done. Although alcoholism can lead to various health conditions, alcoholism itself is not a disease, it's an addiction.
This doesn't mean that people with alcohol-related conditions should be refused treatment. For one thing, it would create
a dangerous precedent. If we're not careful, someday people will be refused treatment if they're unable to prove they couldn't have prevented their disease or injury

The British government earns a lot of money from alcohol excise tax.
I wonder how much of this is spent on the treatment of alcohol-related conditions.

The majority of people in this country enjoy a drink, act responsibly and are not a burden on the health system. Those that find themselves in need of treatment should be able to access medical assistance as long as the government of the day offers a National Health system. It is unreasonable to discriminate against any type of illness, where do you draw the line. Many of the posts on this site have been about addiction, but you do not need to be an addict to suffer an alcohol related illness or disease.
For those that do suffer addiction we need to start addressing the reasons why people turn to alcohol and what support and programmes need to be put in place at an early stage to ease the potention burden on the system. We also need to better educate young people about the effects of alcohol on their health, their personality and their safety. With the increased amount of home drinking many young people are exposed at an early age to alcohol - both the benefits of social occasions such as home celebrations and dinner parties and unfortunately in some cases the excesses that contribute to the burden on the health system. There is a responsibility on both parents and the government to provide this education and to increase the emphasis within the National Curriculum on this subject. It is a complex social issue that will not be resolved by withdrawing medical assistance to those in need.
In answer to the question should the drinks industry play a part in this treatment, they already do. They make a massive contribution to the Government in the form of taxes and duty. They raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for various charities including those that help educate and treat people with drink related problems.
The drinks industry is Global, would we ask the French wine producers to help pay for somebody who was unfortunate enough to get liver disease from drinking Champagne, or the Mexican producers for those that over indulge on Tequila?

How about the Government set the standard by shutting the bars in the Commons - or at least charging normal pub prices.

Oh! Sorry that would mean our lords and masters having to rough it with the rest of us.

Both my parents are drinkers with my mother being an alcoholic. I have tried everything to seek help for my mother ever since i was 13 and there is no help or support in my area. If there was more help and support systems offering detox and rehab then i strongly believe that this would not cost the nhs more further on down the line when it is also too late for some alcoholics. Unfortunatly for my mother i believe that it will be too late and yes she may well cost the nhs, but the frustrating thing is that it could have all been prevented with some earlier on help and support!!!
I dont think that cost of alcohol comes into the equasion very much as if a person is adicted then they will do what they have to no matter the cost to get a drink.
The goverment is a joke!!

our problem is simple, we are brainwashed into a culture of drink and get drunk by advertising of the products, and europeans drink to stay standing and behaving, if you cant hold your drink you are considered as imature. blame the wonderful imaginative advertisers that can create a culture, their employers won't it sells their product.
lets see the advertisers create a new image of people holding their drink and satisfy the producers of alchol

It was not said that if a pint of lager is 4% and another is 5% the increase of alcohol is not 1% but 25%. This should be noted by home wine drinkers, 10% - 14% is a huge persentage increase of alcohol intake!

As a recovering alcoholic I am amazed by some of the comments here. Even those recognising it as a disease and addiction somehow think there has to be a root cause. If there is one it is that alcohol actually works. It is a mood/mind altering substance, initially making one feel great. The same reason explains why the element of choice( enough is enough etc) is removed amongst susceptible folks like me. I didn.t have a choice, one drink was the latch-opener, as my father used to say.
Since drying out I have taken great interest in that which nearly killed me, and others, and can affirm that nobody knows anything. The government does little actual valid research into the extent of the problem, it brings in too much tax revenue. My first GP after detox knew less than me because he had a half-day on all forms of addiction in 7 years training and few NHS professionals know the problem from the inside. Denial is so strong that I have actually met people with significant alcohol problems delivering services to problem drinkers. Anyone who writes that the problem is simple is just that, simple.
Alcohol is now cheaper than it ever has been, the police and licensing authorities refuse to take responsibility for enforcing the (very good) 2003 licensing act and social mobility (poverty of opportunity) for young people goes backwards. What on earth do people expect other than they cannot safely go out in village, town or city on the weekend?
There isn't a "golden bullet" solution and the sooner the public realises the better.

Why should the NHS pay for the treatment of alcaholic illnesses? Because that's what the NHS is for. What are we to do, say no your not being treated? Besides the governemnt has been in bed with the drinks industry for a long time and making reasonable money from drinkers so if anything, the the NHS should not only be treating people, but also paying compensation. Also, I don't belive the government spends more on alcahol related illness than other drugs (implied to be illegal). What about policing alcahol related crime and violence? I think the article failed to factor this in. Should some currently illegal drugs be legalised so as to create a uniform approach to damaging substances, as alcahol is obviously damaging but authorised by the government as socially acceptable. Have the change in drinking laws made things worse? I think not. This comes from marketing strategies by the retail and drinks industries and that's how capitalism works.

Booze causes more harm to those associated with a drunk. My husband is a great guy...add alcohol, and you get Mr. Hyde and then some. What about the victims of their uncontrollable habit? Perhaps the bartenders have some questions to answer....why do they keep supplying people who's legs have long since turned to rubber? Of course, the answer is simple...the almighty pound.
I am a smoker, and have accepted the laws. Not smoking does not cause me to loose control and smash up the house, intimidate my children and make the lives of those around me miserable the way alcohol tends to do. It needs to have more stringent controls. Perhaps a dated card that has to be stamped each time a drink is served to the holder, and only a certain quantity would be permitted per night.
This would drive most drinkers into their homes to consume their mind altering drug, but the upside of this is that the police would not have to spend such a high percentage of their evenings attending to incidents caused by alcohol.