The problem of 'demon drink'

By Mark Easton
BBC News

The teetotal Temperance Movement was started in Liverpool in 1849

Since temperance societies first paraded outside Victorian gin palaces, those who warn of the consequences of the 'demon drink' risk being dismissed as puritanical kill-joys.

It is a charge considered so toxic to electoral success that politicians steer well clear.

This is not the first time the government has been asked to control the public's drinking habits.

The British Medical Association (BMA) report shows alcohol now kills more people every month than heroin does in a year.

But politicians are wary about putting limits on people's alcohol consumption.

"Alcohol can play an important and positive role in British society" the government literature states.

The message is about promoting "sensible" drinking and targeting the minority of "problem drinkers". It is simply an issue of "responsibility".

But medical professionals see it as something altogether more dangerous and the figures suggest they are right.

Heroin kills 700 people a year. Alcohol kills 700 people a month - the death-toll having doubled since the 1990s and set to worsen.

THE BURDEN OF ALCOHOL In England, the rate of liver cirrhosis mortality trebled between 1970 and 1998 Alcohol misuse results in 17m working days lost annually in England 70% of admissions to A&E at peak times are alcohol related According to the British Crime Survey (BCS) 2005-06, 44% of violent offenders in England and Wales were perceived by their victims to be under the influence of alcohol Sources: BMA report

Six thousand children were on alcohol treatment programmes last year; 1,000 of them were under the age of 14.

There are 100 youngsters a week hospitalised through drink - most of them girls.

When asked about their drinking habits, almost four out of 10 men in Britain emerged as hazardous drinkers. And those were the ones who admitted it.

The cost of the damage done by drink is put by the government at £20bn a year.

And yet when MPs read the new 10 year drugs strategy next week, they won't find anything about alcohol.

Doctors may see it as a dangerous drug, but politicians don't - and won't.

As the government's entirely separate alcohol strategy proclaims in its first line: "Our relationship with drink in this country is complicated."