Drink Problem


In the UK Alcohol is in the headlines. On Monday I picked up the local Bristol paper which gave statistics of the effect alcohol abuse is having on the stretched resources of the NHS.(www.thisbristol.co.uk) In Bristol alone it costs the NHS in the city up to £4 million a year and hospitals admit 9,000 people with alcohol related illnesses or injuries. The numbers of people admitted to accident and emergency departments in 2008/09 with drink related causes in the city have risen by 22 per cent on the previous year. The alcohol-related problems occur in all sections of society and all ages.

What needs to be done and what does the Salvation Army need to do?

PROTEST
At the moment there is a growing protest about the low price of supermarket alcohol that is causing the rise in drunkeness. I have to agree that there must be something wrong when it is possible to buy two litres of cider for £1.29, which is less than the price of the same amount of fresh fruit juice. When four cans of lager can be bought for £3, two bottles of white wine for £6, a litre of vodka for less than £8 and a 70cl of whisky for less than £10.00, it is much cheaper to get drunk than it once was.

In the 18th century it was gin that was causing the problem. Gin had become the poor man's drink and it was advertised 'Drunk for 1 penny, Dead drunk for tuppence, Straw for nothing'!!
It could be bought from pedlars, at the grocers and even sold on market stalls.
The government of the day became alarmed when it was found that the average Londoner drank 14 gallons of spirit each year! Several measures were taken including raising the tax on gin, forbidding its sale without a license, costing. Unfortunately this just created a black market but the Gin Act raised the duty on drink and forbade the distillers, grocers, chandlers, jails and workhouses from selling gin. Gin consumption fell dramatically through the rest of the eighteenth century. In 2010 forbidding the sale of alcohol in supermarkets might just have the same effect!

PROMOTE
Read the newspapers, listen to the debates on TV or radio or eavesdrop to a conversation on the bus and a lot of people have an opinion about what should be done about binge drinking and drunken louts on a Saturday night. Our prevailing culture seems to have convinced succeeding generations that it is impossible to celebrate, socialise or be "cool" without the assistance of alcohol. Surely, as Salvationists there has to be a way of promoting tee-totalism as a positive lifestyle choice without being judgmental or apologetic for our views. Our stance might be unusual even among Christians but we have valid arguments and personal testimony about the merits of living without alcohol.

PRAY
I have blogged this before so forgive me for repeating myself but I firmly believe that changes in legislation and the current publicity about alcohol won't be wholly effective because the UK's attitude to alcohol is a demonic stronghold over this nation. Connecting celebration, manhood, maturity and status with alcohol is common among many cultures but the UK seems to lead the world in making drunkeness a badge of honour! Maybe it has something to do with our British inhibitism and self-consciousness but we seem bound by it. And Satan uses it to ruin so many lives. Spiritual strongholds need spiritual weapons to bring them down. Let's pray now!

God bless

Carol