Alcohol: let’s drink in the reality

The Health Department is contemplating setting up clinics in Paceville and possibly in other hotspots to respond to the astronomically high demand for hospital services by drunk revellers at weekends. This bit of news, from the Times of Malta last week, has once again focussed attention on the need to examine the fraught relationship between alcohol and our society.

The situation which the ministry plans to address – essentially binge drinking as part of entertainment culture – is but one of the many aspects of the relationship which is causing a great deal of concern to health authorities and those responsible for the welfare of families and young people.

Studies like the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), which focus on youths of 15 or 16, have shown conclusively that young people in Malta overindulge quite severely: we are quite regularly at or quite near the top of the ranks on several indicators of abusive drinking.

The problem becomes even more serious when one considers that the legal drinking age in Malta is 17.

Over the last four years some important aspects of abusive alcohol use among teenagers have declined, but despite the fact that...