Do Brits Need More Drinking Time?

By J.F.O. McAllister

It's 10 p.m. in Croydon, A grim suburb south of London, and the locals are indulging in the standard rituals of an English Friday night. Two guys with broad smiles and droopy eyes stagger into the road, arms outstretched to embrace any lucky target. Gaggles of young women bounce in and out of the 19 bars that line the main stretch, their skyscraper heels giving good clearance over puddles of vomit. Huddled around a cash machine, glammed up in gold-sequined headbands and lace gloves, Laura and her friends are gearing up for a big night. Are they going to get drunk? "Yeah!" they cry in unison, laughing. "Sums up Croydon, don't it? That's what we do!"

Since the time of the Vikings, the British love of getting sozzled has been a source of pride as much as embarrassment--falling somewhere between bland cuisine and stiff upper lips on the list of distinguishing national characteristics. But these days, that excess isn't so endearing as levels of concern about boozing have reached heights not seen since Victorians decried the evils of cheap gin. Unlike most of their Continental counterparts, whose consumption is falling, the British are drinking more than ever--9.6 L of pure alcohol per person last year, which is 42% more than the amount consumed per American. Binge drinking, defined as putting away the equivalent of a whole bottle of wine in a night, is practiced at least once a week by 36% of British men ages 16 to 24 and by 27% of women. It leaves a trail of social debris--crime, fatal accidents, unsafe sex, date rapes, even an uptick in liver disease among those in their 20s. In places like Croydon, where the economy gets a big boost from vertical-drinking palaces that can compete for customers as far as 50 miles away, city centers have become weekend no-go zones for the sober. Says Commander Chris Allison of London's Metropolitan Police: "There's a culture among certain young people that you haven't had a good night out unless you become paralytically drunk, puked up in a bucket, urinated on someone's front lawn and, best of all, smacked a cop."

The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair has tried to clean up the mess by introducing a change even its supporters acknowledge is paradoxical: extending the hours that pubs and bars can stay open. The 11:30 p.m. closing time, imposed during World War I to ensure that munitions workers could function by breakfast, has always encouraged pub crawlers to toss 'em down fast before last call. Under the new law, which took effect last month, bars can apply for licenses to stay open the entire night. Its backers argue that longer hours would encourage a more relaxed and responsible drinking culture like those found in Italy and France, where public drunkenness is rare, and would ease the tensions generated when hundreds of inebriates pour onto the street at the same time.

Not everyone is ready to drink to the new plan. "The chance that fiddling around with drinking hours is going to make British people into Italians," says Andrew McNeill, director of the protemperance Institute of Alcohol Studies, "is about as likely as my becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury." Allison says vacationing Brits' penchant for getting soused in countries that permit 24-hour tippling should stand as a warning. The law's effects will be limited anyway. In Croydon, although more than 200 bars have applied to stay open later, most want only an hour or two more--which would do little to discourage bingeing and would merely push after-hours carousing later into the night.

Alcohol experts think the government could be a lot more influential if it had the guts to take on the liquor industry and voters who whinge about the nanny state. Those experts say there's good evidence that what works best to curb excess drinking is higher taxes on alcohol, lowering the number and density of places to buy booze and instituting a robust policy of random breath-alcohol testing for drivers. But across Europe--the hardest-drinking region in the world--almost all governments, including Britain's, prefer responsible-drinking campaigns premised on the idea that trouble flows from a small minority rather than from a whole culture tolerant of excess. Which means that Natalie, strapping up her silver sandals in the ladies' room at the Black Sheep Bar in Croydon, won't change her habits anytime soon. Binge drinking "is just what we do," she says. "We don't need to get drunk. We just do it because we can."

With reporting by Jessica Carsen/London