Cheap booze is brewing misery

Late-night revellers enjoying the new longer licensing laws.

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OLDHAM’S director of public health has declared war on the causes of Britain’s binge drinking epidemic — which is driving people away from town centres.

The biggest ever survey on alcohol in the North-West has revealed that low prices and discounts are fuelling a harmful drinking culture.

More than a quarter of respondents drink at harmful levels —over a million people across the region — and nearly half avoid their town centre because of drunken behaviour.

Alan Higgins, who has a joint role with Oldham Council and NHS Oldham, pledged to take action saying: “We will continue to work hard to improve the health and well-being of our residents.

“We believe that joint action could have a significant impact on shifting our region’s unhealthy relationship with alcohol, and we have pledged to prioritise this work over the coming years.”

Oldham is targeted by the Government as being among 20 deprived areas most seriously affected by alcohol-related harm.

It is estimated there are nearly 74,000 people in the borough who binge drink or are addicted. Oldham will get £150,000 as part of a £6million programme to identify harmful and hazardous drinkers and offer them treatment and support.

The survey’s results published today reveal that of 30,000 respondents 80 per cent believed low prices and discounts increase people’s drinking while over half believed that advertising and extended drinking hours are factors that increase drinking.

Dr Alison Giles, director of Our Life, which was created to help improve the region’s health, said: “The results are staggering and as a region we should be asking ourselves — is it acceptable that alcohol is so cheap when it is the cause of so much harm to us as individuals and as communities?”

The North-West has the worst drinking levels in the country with alcohol-related deaths doubling in a generation and 71,000 people admitted to hospital every year. There were more than 73,000 recorded crimes, of which 50,000 were violent offences, related to alcohol across the region last year.