Female binge drink rates 'double'

BBC NEWS Health Female binge drink rates 'double' the Joseph Rowntree Foundation study found 15% of women now binged on alcohol each week. In men, the figure stood at 23% - a small rise on previous statistics.

During the last 20 years, there has been a general increase in drinking in nearly all age groups in the UK.

Campaigners said the findings showed drinking was a problem across society.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation commissioned researchers from Oxford Brookes University to look at a range of sources for the research, including Office for National Statistics data and government reports.

Another interesting article- Bingeing youth of educated women educated women are far more likely to binge-drink in their 20s than those with few qualifications, a study shows.

The Institute of Child Health examined the drinking habits of thousands of British women born in 1958.

Social pressures at work have been blamed, alongside the extra money the educated have to spend.

However, by age 40 less-qualified women were more likely to be drinking too much, the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health study found.

Men of course binge drink as well, but the opposite applies- For men the binge-drinking limit was 10 units in one sitting.


Men with fewer qualifications tend to be three times more likely to binge-drink than their well-educated counterparts, but this did not vary much at different ages.

So why do we have this state of affairs? It seems that “aggressive advertising” is partly to blame, along with the price of alcohol, for instance I walked into my local Tesco the other day, the first aisle was completely full of wines and other drinks, and this is before you can even get to the fruit and vegetable aisle.

Every other advert on the TV is for alcohol, special deals on beers and wine, “buy 100 cans of lager and get 50 cans free” sort of thing.

This encouragement by the “Super” markets makes it easy for us to purchase vast amounts at cheap prices, and being human once we have it home it would be a sin to waste it.

Over drinking is becoming a massive problem in the UK, it not only damages our health but puts an enormous strain on the NHS especially the A&E depts.

The answer is fairly obvious, make alcohol more difficult to obtain, no special offers, even better introduce “licensing hours” in supermarkets so that you cannot buy drink at 8 am, less advertising, and of course drink less, but that would mean that the retailers would see their profits fall, and they are not in the business of “moral selling” only income.

“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” Henny Youngman


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