According to the Institute of Alcohol Studies in the UK, alcohol is 44 percent more affordable today than in 1988. Peter Popham thinks the combination of austerity and the Olympics spells trouble:
It has never been cheaper to get blotto, bladdered, and bombed, and more and more Britons are turning to this easy escape. Home Secretary Theresa May described how young people have got into the habit of downing large quantities of cheap booze before hitting the town for a weekend: they call it "pre-loading." Residents of Prague, Budapest, and other European destinations reachable by low-cost airlines watch in horror and bafflement as gangs of Brits stumble and puke around their elegant city centers. Town squares up and down the U.K. are disfigured every weekend by scenes of Bacchanalian excess. Hospital ERs are inundated. Cirrhosis of the liver, a disease that only used to affect people over 50, threatens to become an epidemic among the young.
(Photo: People watch the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games in a pub in central London on July 27, 2012. By Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images.)
The Dish 