British Binge Drinking: Policy or Culture? (by Andrea Gortze)

(This is part of a series of short analyses by students in the Sociology of Drink class at the University of Minnesota. Authors are credited by name when they have allowed me to do so.)

The readings this week deal primarily with patterns of heavy drinking in different circumstances around the world. I will engage primarily with the Hayward and Hobbs reading, “Beyond the binge in ‘booze Britain’: market-led liminalization and the spectacle of binge drinking,” which ties binge drinking in Britain to the NTE, or "Night Time Economy," a new facet of the post-industrial economy that emerged from a policy introduced in 2003 which removed regulations dictating closing times for bars. 

If the authors are correct, the 2003 Licensing Act had led to a massive increase in binge drinking in Britain. This act amended the licensing process for establishments serving alcohol, enabling them to get licensed to stay open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in some cases. They attribute this policy to an increase in crime and heavy drinking, especially among young people. There are positives to the NTE, the piece mentions that it generates an additional 7 billion pounds for the British government, but Hayward and Hobbs conceive this as insufficient justification for the social ills it creates, saying “the NTE [is] a criminogenic zone that … negatively [impacts] upon their (the Labour Party’s) own crime and social order targets.”

I argue that this is an insufficient examination of binge drinking in the UK, as it fails to account for the “northern European drinking culture” that we discussed earlier in the semester. Hayward and Hobbs say that “the NTE has had a transformative influence upon British cities,” but seem to undermine their own argument in several places. They cite examples of Victorian and Edwardian concern over massive drinking, and acknowledge that such behavior was much more strictly regulated at the time, and bring up the fact that in the mid-twentieth century there was also a great deal of concern over levels of alcohol consumption in the UK, though the regulations they find fault with weren’t introduced until the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty first. Neither of these cases is addressed at all by their theory that the NTE created by the 2003 Licensing Act caused a binge drinking culture of crime and hedonism. 

It is my experience that within a northern European drinking culture, which the United States and the United Kingdom are both examples of, binge drinking is always the default among young people, and changes to liquor laws have very little effect on this. For example, in the state of Minnesota, there are continually discussions about changing the state’s “Blue Laws,” and this discussion never seems to center around organizing a movement of college students who want easier access to alcohol.

Alcohol consumption patterns are deeply rooted in culture, and are not as easy to alter as the authors of this piece seem to believe. It stretches the imagination to say that people will be more likely to binge drink simply because bars are open later. These laws may affect when and where people drink, but the authors do not sufficiently support the case that they also affect how people drink. Seeing as their argument is based in the social ills that come from elevated rates of binge drinking as a result of this law, they do not provide sufficient support that there is a true elevation in the tendency of British youth, or anyone else, for that matter, towards drinking in excess under an NTE economy. They cite a variety of scholarly sources, but it is hard to access their voracity without a detailed account of methodology, results, level of statistical confidence, etc, and they do not do independent research for themselves. While they may have a case that is able to circumvent the concerns listed above, they do not argue it in a sufficiently detailed way to convince a critical reader.

That said, there are some questions we should consider: 

• Under what circumstances, and with what  could a similar policy (of round the clock liquor sales) be adopted in the United States? In a city like Minneapolis, would the effects be much different from what Hayward and Hobbs describe? 
• How did this law affect drinking in private residences? For example, were house parties or incidents of “pre-gaming” at houses decreased because of the easier access to liquor in public places?
• It is not terribly common in my experience in the United States for people to leave a bar or club after closing and go back to someone’s house or apartment to continue drinking for long periods of time, but is that the case among other people’s social groups? How common was this in the UK before and after this law went into effect?
• What is the degree of public support for this policy today? If its consequences are truly so bad, is there a great deal of public disapproval? Is there any chance of it being repealed?