Scotland has always been a nation known for its fondness of drinking, but this relationship has turned sour. The civilised drinking enjoyed by many of our European counterparts is shunned by increasing numbers of Scots in favour of getting drunk quickly and cheaply.
The result is chaos on the streets and in accident and emergency units. As a nation we are good at documenting this decline reports detailing the grim toll that this habit is taking - from deaths caused by liver disease to the huge costs to the NHS and economy. Their collective conclusion is clear: we have to call time on our destructive consumption of alcohol.
Yet our efforts to tackle this growing scourge are lightweight and confused. The "units" system of measuring alcohol is counter-intuitive. A glass of wine may have one, two or even three units depending on glass size and wine. A beer anything between one and three.
Coupled with no uniform labelling policy, it is hardly surprising there is widespread confusion over the "units" system.
The situation has been further confused by the revelation that safe alcohol limits are no more than an "intelligent guess". This admission, by a member of the working party that drew up the guidance 20 years ago, highlights another key problem: many people don't believe what they are told about the dangers of exceeding the recommended daily limit. Many others don't care.
Our approach to tackling the hypnotic hold of alcohol is to hope people calculate the units and curb consumption. This is woefully inadequate and naive.
There is no simple solution, but there is a precedent with the approach used to curb smoking: combining clear-cut health education with legislation to tackle price, advertising, availability and packaging. Crucially - as with smoking - there must by the political strength to press ahead with such unpopular action.
Additionally, new initiatives could be developed to sow the seeds of change, such as encouraging the development of lower-alcohol versions of popular drinks and promoting their adoption with a tax system that makes them cheaper.
Such efforts will not thwart those who seek solace from despair, hopelessness or nihilism in drunkeness. But they may start the slow process of challenging the place alcohol occupies in our culture.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article