Alcohol in the UK
From working men's clubs to swanky hotels, boardrooms to living rooms, you'll often find British people with a drink in their hands.
Alcohol is regularly right there with us when we celebrate or commiserate, work or wind down, and is often seen as part of our national culture.
The amount we drink has become a national talking point. Newspaper headlines scream out warnings on a daily basis: “Rising toll of deaths from liver disease blamed on binge drinking”, “Alcohol epidemic is killing young women” and “National crackdown on under age drinking” are just a few examples. The Government has made tackling alcohol abuse a priority.
But are we really a nation of excessive drinkers? In reality, the majority of people who enjoy a drink do so without it having a negative effect on their day-to-day life. Around 57%* of men aged between 25 and 44 drink within or below the weekly recommended guidelines, as do three quarters of women in the same age group.
Government guidelines
One of the real problems is that people don't actually know how much they are – or should be – drinking.
Close to three-quarters of adults say they have heard of the Government's daily recommendations, yet only one in ten who’ve heard of them correctly know what they are.
The guidelines recommend that women should not regularly exceed 2-3 units daily and that men should not regularly exceed 3-4 units daily. Regularly drink more than this and you could be putting your long- and short-term health at risk.
1.7 million men drink more than 50 units of alcohol a week and 600,000 women drink more than 35 units a week. Drinking at this level, labelled “higher risk” by the Government, puts them at risk from a range of illnesses including cancer and liver disease.
The UK also has one of the highest binge drinking rates in Europe; third behind Ireland and Finland according to a Eurobarometer survey in 2007.
Hard habit to break
So what makes us drink so much? You'll hear many answers.
There are factors like the increased stress brought on by longer working hours and busier lives. Our social habits, which we often don't think to question, can often involve going to the pub for hours on end, or drinking at home with friends.
As well as the risks to our health brought on by exceeding the recommended guidelines, drinking way beyond them can have some pretty negative effects on our society.
Domestic violence, antisocial behaviour and road accidents are all strongly linked to alcohol misuse. Crime and disorder, damage to health and lost working days resulting from alcohol cost the taxpayer around £20 billion per year in England and Wales.*
Not surprising then, seven out of 10 people think the UK would be a “healthier and better place to live” if the amount of alcohol people consumed was reduced.
*From the NHS Information Centre's Statistics of Alcohol: England 2009 **Cabinet Office's Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy for England
- Page last updated by
- Matthew Bateman, 10 Feb 2010.
- Page checked on
- 16 Sep 2008.
