Alcohol ''hits young hard''

Doctors are seeing patients in their late teens and early twenties with severe alcohol-related disease.

More than a hundred specialists from around the UK have told the BBC of their concerns in response to a questionnaire.

They said their hospital wards are being filled by a growing number of young people, particularly women.

The warning comes as a new alliance calls for a rise in alcohol taxes, and a bar on advertising before 9pm.

Twenty-four organisations, representing doctors and charities, have joined together to form the Alcohol Health Alliance.

It wants government to make alcohol misuse a higher priority.

Public health minister Dawn Primarolo said the government had already drawn up a plan for concerted action.

Generational shift

The specialists who responded to the BBC believe the social acceptability of heavy drinking is the most important influence on young people.

Their comments reveal a generational shift on hospital wards around the UK.

Whereas before most hospital consultants would have seen patients in their fifties or sixties, they now describe patients in their early twenties with alcohol-related hepatitis, and women whose livers are permanently damaged with the scarring known as cirrhosis by the time they are 30.

If you look at the burden of damage to society, it's hugely greater for alcohol than for drugs.

Dr Jonathan Mitchell, a consultant hepatologist in Plymouth, is one of the specialists who contacted the BBC.

He said many of his patients don't realise the permanent damage to their health caused by regular heavy drinking.

Until it reaches a critical stage most liver disease is virtually without symptoms.

Dr Mitchell said: "I've seen patients who've been admitted with pretty catastrophic bleeding from stomach and oesophagus with no prior warning of a problem of their liver.

"Others may present with jaundice or swelling of the abdomen because there's a lot of fluid in the abdomen.

"All these three things are signs of quite advanced liver disease and can come out of the blue."

Fatty deposits gradually build up on the liver as alcohol interferes with the way it would normally be processed.

What follows is an inflammation within the liver which often leads to low grade hepatitis.

Although the liver has a remarkable capacity to regenerate the damage eventually reaches the stage where the scarring permanently alters the structure of the liver.

For some patients this will lead to an agonising wait on the liver transplant waiting list before they are forty.

He is not alone in his concerns that the normalisation of heavy drinking is putting a generation at risk from a silent killer.

Of the 115 consultants who contacted the BBC 101 said there had been an increase in the number of patients they were seeing for alcohol related disease.

The shift in the age profile of their patients is also very marked, with 77 saying they had treated a patient under the age of 25.

Worrying snapshot

The doctor's responses are a depressing snapshot of the ages and condition of the patients they see:

• 24-year-old woman with advanced cirrhosis who died
  
  
  
• 25-year-old with advanced alcoholic cirrhosis
  
  
  
• 19-year-old female with end stage liver disease
  
  
  
• 21-year-old who died from acute alcohol poisoning

While attention is often focused on the social disorder caused by binge drinking, many doctors say the serious health effects are not given enough attention.

Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, is one of the leading figures in the new campaign.

He said: "If you look at the burden of damage to society, it's hugely greater for alcohol than for drugs, but the majority of money has always gone on drugs, partly because of the strong link to crime."

The Bible warns us about the problem of alcohol in very clear, black and white terms; "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise." (Proverbs 20:1).

Playground Shooter Avoids Punishment

A 73-year-old farmer who admitted he shot a five-year-old boy in the head at a school playground near Enniskillen has been fined £5,000.

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Darragh Somers recovered from his wounds

Fergus Cleary of Ballydoolagh Road, Garvary admitted maliciously wounding Darragh Somers at a playground near Enniskillen more than two years ago.

After the court hearing, Darragh's family criticised the fine.

He was shot in the back of the head as he played at St Patrick's Primary School, Mullanaskea in April 2005. Darragh was critically injured and spent two months in hospital. Surgeons carried out two major operations to remove the .22 rifle bullet from his head.

Cleary was arrested two months after the shooting.

He had initially denied maliciously wounding the boy, but in a surprise move last month, his defence team requested the case come before a judge in Dungannon. It was at that hearing, with no journalists or members of the Somers family present, that he pleaded guilty.

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Fergus Cleary changed his plea to guilty

Darragh's father Gerard said the fine was inadequate.

"I thought I was coming here today to get some closure, but it has just left me in a daze," he said.

"What we would have liked was for the man to come personally and apologise."

It is beyond belief that someone can "maliciously'' shoot a five year old child in the head and walk away with nothing more than a £5,000 fine. This is utter madness beyond description.

What value does our society place on our children? The legal answer appears to be around the £5,000 mark!

Government Slammed Over UK's "moral collapse"

The Conservative Party is pledging tougher sentences for rapists, as David Cameron slams the Government over society's "moral collapse".

Jail terms for those found guilty of rape have on average fallen to less than seven years, and according to the British Crime Survey, one in every 20 British women has been the victim of rape.

However, at least 75 per cent of these incidents are never reported, and only a tiny proportion of those actually result in a conviction.

Mr Cameron will claim offenders increasingly think they can "get away with it" and will unveil new research suggesting England and Wales have the lowest conviction rate of any European country - at just 5.7 per cent.

He will say: "Studies have shown that as many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it's okay to force a woman to have sex. To my mind, this is an example of moral collapse."

He will tell the Conservative Women's Organisation conference in central London that Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Herbert is to carry out a review of punishments for rape to ensure they are "proportionate to the crime".

Additionally, ways of making it less harrowing for victims to testify in court will also be examined.

Calling for "widespread cultural change", Mr Cameron will also warn that society has become increasingly "sexualised" over the past decade - during which time treating women as sex objects has become viewed as "cool".

He will say: "The average custodial sentence handed to rapists in England and Wales has fallen over the last three years for which there is published data to around 80 months.

"We have a situation where rapists think they can get away with it, while victims fear not being believed and wonder what's the point of pursuing the criminal process."

He will add: "How can any civilised country accept these facts?"

Indeed, how can any civilised country accept these facts? Mr Cameron is right to point to the increasing sexualisation of our society, the general moral collapse of the nation, and the need for "widespread cultural change."

It remains to be seen whether or not this is mere rhetoric. The facts are the facts, and nothing short of a thorough root and branch reform will address this devastating problem.

Society should never tolerate weak, meaningless, short jail terms for rapists. Only the reinstatement of the death penalty would deliver the justice, punishment and deterrence that is so necessary for the continuance of civilized society.

Belfast Calls for a Zero Tolerance Policy to Drugs

Belfast councillors have called for a zero tolerance policy towards drugs in the city. The issue was debated at a special meeting of the council on Monday.

Councillors voted to call on the police and departments of health and education to take stronger action in tackling the rising problem. It follows figures from the Department of Health that show that more than 500 children under the age of 15 have tried to take own life in the last six years.

The department's statistics show that about 23,000 people have been treated in hospital after trying to kill themselves since 2001.

This common sense approach taken by the Belfast City councillors is to be welcomed, and stands in stark contrast to the dangerous, ineffective, immoral and irresponsible suggestions recently put forward by the chief constable of North Wales regarding the same issue.

Also today, a report by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has sharply criticised the Government's strategy of using publicity campaigns and voluntary labelling schemes, saying they are ineffective.

It calls for an urgent study into the impact of 24-hour licensing on alcohol consumption after the annual number of alcohol-related deaths doubled to over 8,000 in 2005 from just over 4,000 in 1991.

Lord Krebs, who chaired the Nuffield Council committee which produced the report, said: "There is also an urgent need for an analysis of the effect of extended opening hours on levels of alcohol consumption, as well as on anti-social behaviour."

Excessive drinking among young people is a particular cause of concern, the Nuffield Council report says.

The Nuffield Council report also names obesity and smoking, as areas where more needs to be done to improve public health.

Clearly “tolerance” is not the way to effectively deal with these issues. The “if it feels good, then it can’t be wrong” idea may indeed be popular, but let’s not deceive ourselves by believing that it is anything other than an overspill of the deluded mistakes of the 1960’s counter-culture mindset. The reality is that great harm is being done to the citizens of the United Kingdom, especially the youth.

The demonstrable fact is that a zero tolerance approach is the only proper and effective way of dealing with certain issues in the real world. It is most regrettable that many today choose to ignore reality, preferring to regurgitate the harmful mistakes of a failed generation.