Drink: the middle-class scourge
Updated on 16 October 2007
New figures show that a significant number of middle class adults are drinking to excess.
What is worse: boozing the night away in some town centre club or a few glasses of wine on the sofa at home?
New figures reveal it's not the classic image of young binge drinkers that's causing the worst problems, but the English middle classes.
More than a quarter of adults in wealthy towns like Guildford and Harrogate are putting away enough alcohol every week to damage their health.
"Hazardous" drinking is defined by the government as the regular consumption of between 22 to 50 units a week for men and 15 to 35 for women.
This equates to three units a day for a man. That's one large - 250ml - glass of wine measuring 12 per cent alcohol.
The effects of hazardous drinking, says the government, can include liver disease, circulatory diseases and cancer. The short term problems include accidents and alcohol-related assaults.
Today's survey by the North West Public Health Observatory at Liverpool John Moores University suggests that people in relatively affluent areas are more likely to be drinking at levels considered "hazardous" to health.
The figures show Runnymede, covering Surrey towns such as Chertsey and Virginia Water, topped the league table, alongside Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, at 26.4 per cent of adults drinking at hazardous levels - a rate of more than one in four.
The lowest percentage of hazardous drinkers was found in relatively deprived Newham, in east London, at 14.1 per cent.
Professor Mark Bellis, director of the North West Public Health Observatory, said: "Across England around one in five adults are drinking enough to put their health at significant risk and one in 20 enough to make disease related to alcohol consumption practically inevitable."
