To think if you have to call an ambulance because you have injured yourself drunk then ....

[stoppinchingthedummy]

you should have to pay for it??

I may be being unreasonable but after an incident i witnessed this weekend it suddenly dawned on me that some people get so blind drunk ,fall over ,bang their head or whatever they may do and then an ambulance is called and they are taken to a&e all at the tax payers expense and more to the point taking paramedics away from someone who might be desperatly ill needing it?

I'm more inclined to let them "go ghetto".

Everything is dangerous in the wrong hands, cars, golf clubs, dogs... We can't take everything away from the majority just because the few can't handle it.

I can see the sense in the idea, but it might create more problems than it solves. For a start, people do sometimes die from alcohol poisoning because their friends let them "sleep it off" rather than calling an ambulance. If a group of students, for example, have to decide whether to call an ambulance for their friend, they might well decide against it if they think they will land their friend with a bill.

Secondly, people who just fall over will try to avoid the bill by saying that they were attacked etc. "I didn't see him officer, I can't remember what he looked like". It's going to waste more time and money than it saves.

Thirdly, where do you draw the line? I have a friend who collapsed during a marathon. Luckily he was OK, but he was taken to hospital in an ambulance. Well, that's pretty much self inflicted, isn't it?

'We can't take everything away from the majority just because the few can't handle it.'

It's not taking it away. No one needs alcohol. It's bad for your body, anyhow (as for the heart benefits, you can get those from exercise and diet without booze). It's a non-essential. So are fags. So class them the same and treat them the same - restrict access, make it expensive, etc.

Expat, prohibition does not work, never has, never will.

We already have problems with black market cigarettes and vodka, restricting access will just worsen the probelm.

Where did I mention prohibition? Nowhere. Prohibition means banning alcohol entirely.

Britain's pubs used to close at 11PM. There were no superpubs, places selling booze 24/7. And hello?! Everyone managed to still live with it.

Restricting access doesn't worsen the problem in other countries. It costs a lot more to drink in, for example, Scandanavian countries.

That don't have their town centres become no-go zones at weekends, either.

It will worsen the problem here - forbidden fruit and all that.

Binge drinking should be socially unacceptable here as it is in many European countries.

So what did people do when pubs closed at 11PM and booze wasn't to be had cheap as chips in big supermarkets?

This isn't Europe. It never has been and it never will be.

That situation was actually a result of wartime and post-wartime austerity. Bit of a historical anomaly. Prior to that this country drank like a fish.

You cannot put the genie back in the bottle anway (unless we begin WW3 maybe) so the only way to cope with binge drinking and alcoholism is to make it socially unacceptable - like drink driving.

"Well there is opening the arguement to things like obesity,smokers etc but charging a pregnant women for getting pregnant and needing treatment...that is fecking absurd and not an arguement at all"

Well it depends how far you want to push the argument. I think it's absurd also but it's the logical conclusion of the argument in the op. If you are charging people who need ambulances due to consequences of their own decisions then it has to be for all people who need an ambulance due to their own choices. Otherwise you get into a situation where someone in charge is making subjective judgment calls on what constitutes a result of your own choices and what is of benefit to society etc.
Fat people? People engaged in non-professional sport? Smokers? DIY? Drivers? Pregnant people? Elderly injured by steps or as a consequence of unsuitable living conditions?

"So what did people do when pubs closed at 11PM and booze wasn't to be had cheap as chips in big supermarkets? "

Well when I was a girl you:

Bought something cheap from a corner shop to drink before you went out
Had a few pints in the pub
Sent someone out just before the corner shops closed / 11pm to buy more cheap stuff
Drink it on the bus on the way to a club, or at someone's house

Was still easy to get drunk. You just had to be thrifty and plan it carefully!

And yes the whole strict licencing hours was an anomoly. Like I said earlier, people in Britain have been spending much of their time pissed up since time immemorial. Remember Gin palaces? I saw a prog once about victorian (?) london and the presenter gave a stat I will never forget (and god knows how they worked it out) but he reckoned that at any given moment 7 out of 10 adults in london were so drunk they couldn't stand up!

Don't forget also that before sanitation in london everyone drank light ale all the time, man woman and child, as it was the only thing that was safe (having been cooked up as part of the brewing process). Britain has a long history of being a nation of drunkards... Not terribly auspicious, but I think it's foolish to overlook that.

Problem with us lot is if you make booze very expensive then people just turn to other potentially more dangerous things to get off their faces.

You also get into situations where people start cooking up the illegal stuff again.

I don't know what the solution is TBH.

'Britain has a long history of being a nation of drunkards... Not terribly auspicious, but I think it's foolish to overlook that.'

Exactly, but that's why this whole, 'We need to become more like Europe in our drinking' and 'We need to drink more like Europeans' is never going to work here.

I have never personally understood the urge to go and get drunk. I mean the urge to drink solely with the purpose of being drunk.

We will never become more like France, Spain etc.

We are more like the Scandinavians, Germans, Russians etc

It's not like we're the only nation in the world who likes to get blotto.

You are lucky xstitch. Lots of people do!

A neighbour of ours regularly drinks himself into a situation and unless his elderly unwell parents hide the phones he will call the ambulance around 2am.

I can honestly say I have never been drunk and of people find this out they react as if I should be ashamed of this. They say 'but you have to', 'you can't live and not get drunk'.

Ignore them xstitch. They are talking rubbish.