Opinion on "binge drinking"

[IceAgeComing]

I can guarantee that any changes to alcohol laws in European countries was not because of some random ten year old American report.  It's not like the problems of excessive alcohol (which is different from what I see as binge drinking) aren't something new - look at the power of the temperance movement in parts of the UK in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for example.  I mean it's not like there's been a significant change to actual laws; plus certainly the drinking culture in a lot of areas in Europe is still pretty relaxed - Belgium was a world different to Scotland for example.

But I mean what do I know, it's not like I live here and have experienced drinking lots of alcohol in several countries.

[IceAgeComing]

I mean Beer Street and Gin Lane is an incredibly interesting tying just for all of the subtext in the thing - personally for me it's the nationalist angle on the thing that's interesting.

Also it celebrates how good ale is, and that's a message that I approve of.

[IceAgeComing]

And I mean the standard thing of 16 for beer, cider and wine/18 for spirits - with an added younger age in for drinking a low ABV drink with food in a restaurant is a pretty standard thing in most of Europe still.  Indeed lots of places still don't have a legal age on the CONSUMPTION of Alcohol, merely the buying of it - I know that in Belgium its technically not illegal to consume alcohol at any age and here its a ridiculously low age - I'd like to say 5 years old, but it might have changed.

There's also the fact that you were talking about attitudes towards alcohol and you ignore the fact that legislative differences go beyond merely age but also include things like public drinking laws, and licensing hours for both pubs and clubs or off-licences.  Here things are still really quite strict (off sale curfew of any drink after 10pm seven days a week: at the weekends most pubs close at 1am and clubs at 3am, outside Edinburgh public drinking is a finable offence) whilst if you compare to Belgium (which I do because its the only other one that I'm confident about) things are a lot, lot looser (no curfew, bars seem to be able to open as late as they want and so you'd have pubs open until like 5am at weekends which was very nice as the sort of person who can't handle clubs all of the time, public drinking is legal) and those laws don't seem to have significantly shifted.  Now a significant part of that is the culture which hasn't significantly changed - you give Scotland Belgium's alcohol laws and Glasgow would be a war zone the first Friday night after they changed I'm sure whilst health outcomes would be very negative, while Belgium would find our laws incredibly strict and vigorously protest against them.  The more... liberal culture around alcohol is still present in most of Europe - when I was there the thing that the interns would do after work on a Thursday was go to the bars in front of the Parliament and drink our filthy cheap happy hour beers but then stop relatively early and go home because of work the next day; here that sort of thing would be incredibly odd on any day that's not before either a weekend or a holiday, and then you'd probably be expected to go and drink a lot more than that.

Indeed like Crabcake said the main change in the UK in the last twenty or so years has actually been a liberalisation of alcohol laws - there are apparently these mythical places that have twenty-four hour licences somewhere in this land, in Scotland there used to be an additional very strict curfew on booze at shops on Sundays, plus licence times were a lot, lot stricter than the above.