Mass Drunkenness in the U.K.

If you ever read the British press, then you've probably come across articles and editorials about the increasing public drunkenness in the U.K. An article in today's New York Times describes the problem and the growing concern about it:

Britain has always been a place where people enjoy a drink or two (or more) at the local pub, and where football hooligans and so-called lager louts represent the public face of overconsumption. But lately the country's growing inability to hold its liquor has taken on the scope of a national crisis.

Even Prime Minister Tony Blair is worried. "There is a clear and growing problem in our town and city centers up and down the country on Friday and Saturday nights," said Mr. Blair, whose son, then 16, was found vomiting and incoherent on a London street four years ago after an evening of drinking. "As a society we have to make sure that this form of what we often call binge drinking doesn't become the new British disease."

By some measures it already has. Cheaper and more readily available alcohol, changing drinking patterns, a steep increase in drinking among young women and a decline in old standards of civility have turned what was once a manageable part of life into a problem that costs society, according to government estimates, $35 billion a year.

This is a favorite theme in Theodore Dalrymple's writings. Here's an op-ed he wrote for The Daily Telegraph about four months ago. Public drunkenness is one of the reasons Dalrymple has given for his decision to leave the U.K. and take up residence in France.

If you don't know anything about Theodore Dalrymple — he is a physician and psychiatrist who lives in Birmingham and sometimes writes under his real name Anthony Daniels — then you might want to look at this profile from The New York Sun. Since his politics perfectly mesh with much of American conservatism, his essays frequently appear in The New Criterion and City Journal.