Alcohol Policy UK

Alcohol field station, Newcastle

A new night time clinic opened in Newcastle's Quayside on December 9th, to be available on Friday and Saturday nights from 8pm to 8am, offering trolleys, stretchers, toilets, water and medical treatment to drunken patients for minor injuries.   The clinic is staffed by ambulance staff, an A&E doctor and Red Cross and St John's Ambulance volunteers.  More details in this Observer story

Funding has come from Newcastle Primary Care Trust, but despite early claims for its success, the clinic has already been relocated from the Guildhall to St John the Baptist Church Hall in Grainger Street, after complaints from residents living near the original venue.  And according to this Evening Chronicle story, the PCT plans to wind up the service altogether in the New Year.

See previous post on Norwich SOS Bus.

Drinks price war looming

From the Publican Bulk buys of beer and spirits in the main retailers are set to get even cheaper in the next few weeks as the supermarket price wars heat up. Research by market analysts Verdict anticipates that off-trade prices will continue to decrease into the New Year, and brewers fear customers may be drawn away from pubs to drinking at home.

Harm minimisation: free taxis home from the pub

From the Publican:

The owners of the Duke’s Head in Wallington, South London have teamed up with a local taxi firm to provide customers who live within a three-mile radius of the pub free transport home between December 19 and January 2.

Licensee Sue Grundy said:

We often have customers asking us to book them a taxi after a few Christmas drinks, so we thought we’d make it easy for them this year by paying for the taxi as well. All we ask is that they give us an hour’s notice and they can put their worries about driving behind them.

Workplace health and safety: noise in clubs

From icBirmingham: A survey of clubs and pubs in Birmingham's entertainment quarter found that music is regularly played so loud that the hearing of bar staff and glass collectors is at risk of permanent damage.

Thirteen out of 31 premises visited by city council environmental health teams found sound levels above 90 decibels, equivalent to the noise emitted when a power drill is used on concrete.  All but one of the premises were breaking legal limits for noise levels at work.

Employees had not been given hearing protection nor were quiet rooms set aside for staff, contravening the Noise at Work regulations.  In two cases, the inspectors noticed that glass collectors had devised their own ear plugs made from toilet paper.

Almost 100 members of staff were spoken to from bars and clubs in Broad Street, the Arcadian Centre and other city night spots. Nearly half said they had suffered from ringing ears or a temporary dullness in hearing. The symptoms are typical of exposure to excessive noise and are likely to result in long-term hearing damage, according to the council.

Workplace Christmas parties, fighting and sexual harassment

Research by Croner, business and employment consultants, suggests that half of office parties end up with colleagues fighting, one in three with incidents of sexual harassment and one in five with accidents involving employees.

Croner advise employers to:

• issue a “party policy” stating the responsibilities of employees and employer and clarifying unacceptable behaviour such as bullying and fighting
• identify potential hazards, for example by inspecting the venue and considering the safety of people going home
• ensure invitations to husbands and wives are extended to partners of the same sex to avoid potential sexual orientation discrimination claims
• managers should avoid discussing promotion, career prospects or salary with employees as they will expect “promises” made under the influence of alcohol to be kept
• limit the number of free drinks and be prepared to warn staff to take it easy on drink —employers may be held responsible for drink-induced disasters
• ensure food is safe to eat — buffets present a particularly high risk of food poisoning from foods such as cooked meats, eggs and mayonnaise, which should not be left out at room temperature for more than 90 minutes and should be stored below 5 degrees centigrade
• inform or remind staff of the company’s view on relationships — romantic encounters at office parties can cause embarrassment afterwards and put a strain on working relationships
• warn employees against drink driving, also provide numbers of local taxi firms or hire a minibus
• be clear about what will be expected of employees the morning after — where employees need to drive or operate machinery they should either be advised beforehand not to drink too much or be given alternative work until they are fit to resume their normal tasks.

Respect Campaign, South Gloucs

A poster campaign featuring model has been launched in South Gloucestershire, aimed driving down violent crime and publicising the dangers of binge drinking.  The Respect Campaign is a Safer South Gloucestershire initiative, backed by Avon and Somerset Police and the local authority

The 'eye-catching' posters have been displayed in licensed premises, public conveniences and fitness centres. They are designed to appeal to 18-24 people, and to highlight that being drunk and disorderly could not only result in an £80 fixed penalty notice, but is also unattractive and unappealing to the opposite sex.

Story here. 

The Respect Campaign appears to be based on the Blackpool Nightsafe Campaign, see previous post.  Pics here.

Technical problems

Apologies for the gap in posts recently; I've had some technical problems accessing my Typepad account, now resolved.

Alcohol and sexually transmitted disease

The Health Protection Agency has published the 2005 annual surveillance report for the United Kingdom (UK),  describing a worrying situation with undiminished and high levels of transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among men who have sex with men (MSM), a steady increase in the number of HIV-infected black Africans in the UK, limited but compelling evidence that heterosexual transmission of HIV within the UK is slowly rising, and continuing high transmission of other STIs, especially chlamydia among young people. The report summarises current surveillance information on HIV and STIs, as well as some of the behaviours underlying transmission, and shows the distribution of the problem across different areas of the country.

Interestingly, the Public Health Association Cymru believes there is a link between the steady increase in young people being diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the binge drinking phenomenon. See the icWales story here.

Managing the night time economy: AMEC, Nightsafe and lollipops

AMEC3

From the Home Office: 

"In the run-up to Christmas, we are implementing tough new measures to free our streets from drunken disorder. The government has pledged £2.5m to boost a range of specialist operations in the toughest ever crackdown on alcohol-fuelled disorder and rogue pub landlords.

The campaign will run until the end of the year and will involve all 43 police forces across England and Wales."

Police guidance says that policing tactics as part of AMEC (alcohol misuse enforcement compaign) will be intelligence-led and based on local solutions for local problems.  However, core tactics are:

• Test-purchase operations (in partnership with trading standards officers)
• Early intervention – a highly visible police presence early in the evening, being robust about dealing with the low-level crime and disorder they encounter, can reduce more serious violent crime later on in the night.
• Use of FPNs (fixed penalty notices) – Issuing FPNs on the street can effectively deal with situations at a minimum cost to police bureaucracy and time off patrol.
• Effective use of CCTV – having officers stationed in the CCTV control room, or a direct radio link between control room staff and police can make early intervention more effective and can assist with identification of troublemakers
• Working with licensees and door staff – schemes such as Best Bar None have proved very successful
• Identification of problem premises and hotspots – managing resources around the ‘top ten’ problem premises and disorder hotspots can be very effective
• Multi-agency visits – working with the Fire Service, Environmental Health, Trading Standards, etc, multi-agency visits can be used to target premises which are known to be causing problems.

Nightsafe

Meanwhile, a Nightsafe scheme has been launched in Bradford to warn young people of the dangers of excessive drinking, by Bradford District Safer Communities Partnership.  Aimed at 18-24 year olds, the campaign includes ads on the radio and buses, beer mats and posters in pub and club toilets.  The will also be a giant mobile screen in part of Bradford city centre on two consecutive Friday nights – December 9 and 16 broadcasting campaign messages according to this Yorkshire Post story.   

Nightsafe schemes (sometimes called 'Walk Away') are running in a number of towns and cities eg Leeds, Birmingham, Blackpool , some Suffolk towns, Great Yarmouth, Lincoln.

Lollies and plain clothes police

Club and pub goers in Carlisle will be offered lollies at the end of the night – a strategy believed to reduce noise nuisance and disorder.  Also plain-clothes police officers will be checking that bar staff don’t serve drunk people.  See the News and Star story here.

Is alcohol good for you? New research

Increased risk of dementia

A Finnish cohort study has found that binge drinking in midlife is associated with an increased risk of dementia. The researchers define binge drinking as exceeding the amount of 5 bottles of beer or a bottle of wine on 1 occasion at least monthly.

Jarvenpaa et al (2005) Epidemiology 16(6):766-771

Abstract here.

Very small coronary protective effect

Researchers from New Zealand claim in the Lancet that the apparent protective effect of alcohol may be largely due to confused research. Any benefit from light to moderate drinking is probably small and unlikely to outweigh the harm to health caused by alcohol. They say that if anything, the evidence of heart protection is more convincing for heavy drinkers. Daily Mail article here.

Jackson et al (2005) Alcohol and ischaemic heart disease: probably no free lunch The Lancet, 366:1911-1912

Alcohol saves more people than it kills

Meanwhile, Professor Eric Single claimed at an AERC conference last week that

Basically alcohol reduces heart disease and strokes because it thins the blood. This was first discovered not by alcohol experts but by heart specialists who started having to take alcohol consumption into account in their studies. In Australia, New Zealand and Canada we have found there were more lives saved from moderate drinking than were lost through excess drinking.

Details here