Binge Drinking: Students

The first article I looked at (1) said that binge drinking is a feature of student life and amongst UK undergraduates, it said that one in two male students regularly indulge in binge drinking exceeding the drinking levels of their peers in the general population. It was also conserened that tobacco use, drug misuse and unprotected sex are risk taking behaviours that may be exhibited whilst students are under the influence of alcohol, also listing some of the potential negative consequences of this, such as poor mental health, contracting a sexually transmitted infection, unplanned pregnancy, unintentional injuries to self or others.

The second article I looked at (2) was a news report on a 16 year old boy who puched a man to death after drinking for 12 hours. This is an illustration of the negative consequences that the previous article mentioned. The next article (3) is another display of negative consequences of binge drinking. In this case however the actual bar crawl was organised by the Birmingham based Varsity Leisure Group Ltd, this shows that they are in a way condoning the binge culture in Britain and possibly profiting from it.

The binge drinking culture in Britian is higher than other European countries and there always seems to be stories on this in the media. Is binge drinking out of control? Are the companies that draw on this culture to blame? Answers on a postcard, what do you think?


(1) http://www.newswales.co.uk/?section=Health&F=1&id=19206
(2) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1268031/Judge-slams-underage-binge-drinking-epidemic-boy-16-punches-stranger-death.html
(3) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220579/Carnage-Shame-drunken-student-caught-urinating-war-memorial-mass-pub-crawl.html


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