Students have always had an indulgent love affair with alcohol, but there are no picky people wondering how to find “Mr Right” here – in fact most students simply follow the basic guideline of – if it’s cheap and has lots of alcohol in it, it’s good.
That is why for the specialist in getting ‘soberly challenged’, the drinks deal (Trebles for Singles for example) is the Holy Grail – a way of keeping your money and losing a few memory cells – very effectively.
Under new government proposals this ritual might change very soon, as all three main parties are proposing to take a stance on what has been deemed “irresponsible” offers by pubs. Home Secretary Alan Johnson commented on the proposal, stating that there was a “duty to act”, with Labour’s policies intending to ban any promotions in bars and pubs which could lead to problems such as anti social behaviour.
The annual cost of drink-related crime in the UK alone looks to be approximately between £8bn and £13bn, and York itself is no stranger to the culture of binge drinking, with a report commissioned by the Department of Health showing that 22.3 per cent of adult residents in York drink far more than they should, a percentage that is “significantly worse” than the national average.
But is banning drinks deals really the answer? Many Students are of the opinion that gaps in the proposed legislation will render it pointless. One student commented, “I don’t think this will have as big an effect on binge drinking as the government would hope, especially for students. People will still be able to buy cheap alcohol from supermarkets, and will simply become drunk before they even go out, which frankly is a lot worse.” A spokesman from the British Beer and Pub Association, Mark Hastings seems to agree with the faults in the legislation, commenting that, “What with 70% of all alcohol sold through supermarkets and widespread concern about their promotional prices, the measures announced by the Home Office seem lopsided and unbalanced.”
Conversely, it seems that supermarkets are doing all they can to cut down on alcoholic promotions as well, with statistics revealing that compared to the 26% of the entire promotions that supermarkets had on offer last year, this year the figure has dropped to 22%.
With events such as Carnage criticised for not taking binge drinking as seriously as they should now taking place more frequently in York, it seems only a matter of time before someone decides to hit York’s bars and pubs with the banning legislation, but whether it will be effective remains questionable.