This article gives a bit of an idea of combating excessive alcohol consumption in England. It's interesting the man quoted in the article says Great Britain's level of alcohol consumption is at an epidemic level. I heard the same thing said about the United States' consumption rate over five years ago. The American who stated this runs an alcohol rehab facility in California and studies the trends. A bit frightening...and something we need to stay aware of.
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New Year drunks should pay for hospital care?
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Excessive drinking over New Year's Eve could cost Britain's National Health Service as much as 23 million pounds, according to a report on Thursday which recommends drunks be charged a hospital admission fee of 532 pounds ($845.9).
"Alcohol misuse in Britain is at a level where it constitutes a public health epidemic," said the report by the right-leaning Policy Exchange think-tank.
Direct costs to the state-funded NHS, which provides free health care for Britons, are nearly 3 billion a year, with hospital admissions for alcohol intoxication doubling in a decade, it added.
The government should review its entire strategy for tackling the harms from alcohol misuse, it advised.
"We recommend that the costs of being admitted to hospital to sleep off alcoholic excess should be met by individuals, not the NHS," said Henry Featherstone, head of the think-tank's health unit.
"Those admitted to hospital for less than 24 hours with acute alcohol intoxication should be charged the NHS tariff cost for their admission of 532 pounds."
That amount would be reduced for those paying the costs of their own alcohol education and awareness course.
Department of Health figures confirm that total annual healthcare cost relating to alcohol misuse amounts to about 2.7 billion pounds a year.
(Reporting by Stephen Addison; Editing by Stefano Ambrogi and Paul Casciato)
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Prevention In The Stratosphere
Shaming of wrongdoers in America goes back a long, long way. Think the stockades where early Colonists were held in public, the powers that be hoping they'd be embarrassed by the public ridicule.
That type of punishment has been proven ineffective, for the most part. Plus, with the Constitutional right of no cruel and unusual punishment, you don't often see people hung out to dry in your neighborhood.
Now, with the era of social networking, one D.A. in Texas is bringing a bit of the shaming punishment back to the forefront. The D.A. of Montgomery County, Texas is using Twitter to post the names of DUI offenders. Since beginning the practice, a couple dozen drunk drivers in Texas have had their names "revealed" to the public.
I put revealed in quotes for one reason: their DUI arrest is already public information. The D.A. is just using a creative and technologically advanced medium to get their names out in front of the public. Here's a link to an article and you can draw your own conclusions:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6802419.html
One of the complaints of the practice says it's not right to single out drunk drivers. His wish is that if the D.A. is going to do this, then the name of every arrestee should be put up on Twitter. My opinion? Fine by me!
The D.A. has a fine point: DWI is the biggest crime in his county. For such a prevalent crime, measures can be taken to try to prevent such a crime.
The use of Twitter to share the names of drunk drivers doesn't exactly fall into shaming alone. It's also a great preventative tool. If you were in this county, wouldn't you think twice about driving drunk to be sure your name is kept out of the media?
Either way, I applaud any efforts that keep drunk drivers off the road – when nearly 15,000 Americans are killed every year by this preventable crime, I'm glad someone in the criminal justice system is stepping up to try to make a difference.
That type of punishment has been proven ineffective, for the most part. Plus, with the Constitutional right of no cruel and unusual punishment, you don't often see people hung out to dry in your neighborhood.
Now, with the era of social networking, one D.A. in Texas is bringing a bit of the shaming punishment back to the forefront. The D.A. of Montgomery County, Texas is using Twitter to post the names of DUI offenders. Since beginning the practice, a couple dozen drunk drivers in Texas have had their names "revealed" to the public.
I put revealed in quotes for one reason: their DUI arrest is already public information. The D.A. is just using a creative and technologically advanced medium to get their names out in front of the public. Here's a link to an article and you can draw your own conclusions:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6802419.html
One of the complaints of the practice says it's not right to single out drunk drivers. His wish is that if the D.A. is going to do this, then the name of every arrestee should be put up on Twitter. My opinion? Fine by me!
The D.A. has a fine point: DWI is the biggest crime in his county. For such a prevalent crime, measures can be taken to try to prevent such a crime.
The use of Twitter to share the names of drunk drivers doesn't exactly fall into shaming alone. It's also a great preventative tool. If you were in this county, wouldn't you think twice about driving drunk to be sure your name is kept out of the media?
Either way, I applaud any efforts that keep drunk drivers off the road – when nearly 15,000 Americans are killed every year by this preventable crime, I'm glad someone in the criminal justice system is stepping up to try to make a difference.
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