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During a 41 year career as a journalist, for our Editor Phil Parry the latest trends have always featured prominently, and now new worrying figures show that drinking among young people in Wales is on the increase.
Sometimes they look ridiculous.
I have filmed with the police as they contained drunken revellers in cities after dark countless times.
On one occasion, a young man who stood swaying in a queue waiting to get into a nightclub on St Mary Street in Cardiff, proclaimed loudly to me: “DO I LOOK DRUNK?”.
To which I was forced to reply: “Well, yes you do in fact”.
Scenes like this (of which there were many), have been underlined for me by figures released recently by the NHS in Wales showing that the numbers of children being kicked out of school because of alcohol or drug misuse had increased by 119 per cent on the previous year.
School exclusions for this reason were up 16.5 per cent from 2018-19, and was the highest number since 2011-12.
Recent legislation seems to have had little impact in this area.
The Public Health (Minimum Price for Alcohol) (Wales) Act 2018 was implemented on 2 March 2020, and applies to all businesses, organisations and persons required to hold a license for alcohol.
It appears to be quite rigorous, dictating that any retailer who sells or supplies, or authorises the sale or supply of alcohol below the minimum price will be breaking the law and could be fined.
Yet it would seem that Welsh young people are securing their supply of drink outside the retail sector.
Perhaps from friends?
Drink has a long history, so its use (and misuse) is a thorny problem – not least among young people.
For example the occasional Gin and Tonic will probably do no harm whatsoever, and it is perceived even to have possible medicinal qualities.
There is, however, virtually no evidence for this.
What seems to have happened is that Tonic water and Quinine (an anti-Malaria compound) were discovered separately.
One writer who has researched the subject extensively, has written: “There is nothing to suggest a medical purpose in (the) consumption (of Gin and Tonic).
So drinking the occasional G and T shouldn’t be seen as doing you any good, it just doesn’t do you any harm – it’s simply refreshing on a summer’s day.
But binge drinking lots of alcohol does lots of harm – as the Wild West scenes in Cardiff after dark, and the latest figures on school exclusions testify…
The memories of Phil’s decades-long award-winning career in journalism (when following important and worrying trends was always paramount), as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
