The UK Leads the Way in an Undesirable Statistic

In last weeks’ WSJ, a story was illustrated with people who had fallen down drunk on the road, and was about a statistic that bodes badly for the future of the United Kingdom. Despite years of the rate of drunkenness falling in other European countries and in the US, in the UK the number is climbing. The majority of the under-30 population drinks to ridiculous excess….on a regular basis.

There is now more public drunkenness and passing out of  youth on streets than in any time in history.  It is surprising because prices and taxes in most co untries have gone up.  But in the city of Cardiff, Wales, the spectre of seeing vomiting, passed out 20-somethings is all too familiar.

The hooligans of the football matches used to get more press–now it’s the general public, going out for beer after beer mixed with harder stuff, and the result is a mess. Accidents, alleyways that smell like piss, and a streets that night after night are filled with drunks.

I’ve read many different stories about this same situation happening in Mexico.  Entire villages in the Sierra where the local men get so drunk on payday that they sprawl on streetcorners and have terrible accidents in their trucks.

I’m impressed to some degree that we’ve done something right in the US by increasing taxes and making public drunkenness not as common as it once was.  I suspect that taxes and the cost of beer will have to rise significantly in the UK if they really want to combat this bad situation.