Going Sober for October?

This October Macmillan are asking people to embark on a heroic quest - to go 31 days without any alcohol and prove that they are a Soberhero.

You won't be booze-free alone. You'll be joining thousands of other heroes across the land Going Sober for October, raising money to do something amazing for people with cancer. Whose in? Visit www.gosober.org.uk for more information and to sign up!

Drink-driving teen crashes dad's £100k sports car into house

Photo: BPM Media

Harry Bishop has admitted crashing his dad's £100,000 sports car into a house in Sutton Coldfield while twice over the drink drive limit.

The teenager ploughed the Audi R8 into the front of the property causing more than £5,000 worth of damage.

The 19-year-old appeared before Birmingham magistrates and pleaded guilty to driving a motor vehicle while above the alcohol limit, using a motor vehicle without insurance and taking it without the consent of the owner.

The teen took the car after his father had left the keys to the R8 down stairs and had gone to bed, then at about 5am he was awoken by his son who told him ‘I have just crashed your car into a house.”

The Father and son then went back to the location and Police arrived on the scene to carry out a breath test, he was found to have 83 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35.

After the incident Harold 72, and Janet, 71, who had been asleep less than 2ft from where the car landed, told how the white sports car destroyed the front fence and wall and smashed down their front door and part of the porch.

We were asleep when all of a sudden ‘boom!’ there was a massive bang and I thought a bomb had gone off. We looked out of the window and saw this white car was next to the house sideways on to the pavement.”

– Harold Perry

The case has been sent to Crown Court and Bishop was bailed to appear there on June 26.

Drink-driver ONLY 100 metres from his home decides to take the car - and gets caught!

Drunk driving is always stupid, but if there were levels of stupid this is probably the dumbest example ever!. In Boston, Lincolnshire, a 34-year-old man named Przemyslaw Szulc was arrested for driving under the influence.

Szulc told police that he had been drinking at a barbecue only 100 meters (328 feet) from his house. Rather than walk (which would have taken two minutes), he decided to drive.

Ironically, because the town of Boston is a maze of one-way streets, the drive home was actually a mile and a half long. It was during that mile and a half that police saw him swerving into the kurb and pulled him over for drink driving.

The man was fined £275 and ordered to pay costs of £85, as well as a victim surcharge of £28. He also got a 20 month driving ban.

Defence solicitor Carrie Simson said:

"He admits that what he did was a foolish decision and he has shown remorse. He is a hard working man and luckily will not lose his job after losing his licence but he will have to arrange transport."

Sources: The Lincolnshire Echo

Man dies after drinking 56 shots of alcohol

The owner of  a bar in France is being charged with Manslaughter after being accused of allowing a man known only as Renaud (57), to drink so much that he died.

The Le Starter bar allegedly had a blackboard on the wall of the bar informing people about the world record for drinking shots, this is thought to have given Renaud the idea about  his extreme drinking session.

Witnesses say that Renaud had already had 14 shots before starting his world record attempt, which he kicked off by doing 30 shots within one minute.

Renaud's daughter claims the bar owner whispered ’12 more to go’ into the inebriated mans ear.
 

After 56 shots he went into cardiac arrest and died the next day in hospital.

The prosecuting lawyer Antoine Portal said ‘inciting someone to consume’ is an ‘extremely serious mistake for a bar owner’.

The bar owner has insisted that patrons are ‘responsible for themselves’ while drinking at his establishment.

 

 Source

Turned away from McDonald's for failing a breathalyser test

A 25-year-old teacher has become the first person to be turned away from McDonald’s in Cambridge for failing a breath test. The branch has just signed up to a police scheme to curb alcohol-related violence.

The teacher was in need of some sustenance after a day at the races and a night on the town. So, like many revellers in the small hours, he sought out the burger chain’s famous golden arches – only to be refused entry because he had drunk more than three times the drink-drive limit.

‘I went to McDonald’s at 2am to get some food and security staff said I had to blow into a breathalyser if I wanted to get in,’ he said.

‘They said I could have got in if I was three times the drink-drive limit or under. I was well over that but I couldn’t believe they said no.’ The man, who insists he did not act aggressively in any way, added: ‘How do you get turned away from McDonald’s for being too drunk?

‘I don’t know why anyone would be there at 2am if they hadn’t been drinking.’ His plans for a Big Mac meal thwarted, he went for a snack at a burger van instead. 

 

141 people were arrested for being drunk in Cambridge last year and 263 were arrested for public order offences.

 

McDonald’s said: ‘At the request of Cambridgeshire Police we are taking part in their pilot scheme. A person’s behaviour will determine the likelihood of them being breathalysed and this should have no impact on the majority of customers.’

The police-funded scheme, which began last Friday, is believed to be the first of its kind in the country. A handful of venues are understood to have signed up,

Cambridgeshire Police said the breathalyser kits were not designed to be used as an entry requirement but as a tool to clamp down on drink-related incidents.

Source

Adolescents that drink alcohol cause changes in their brain that last into adulthood

Repeated alcohol exposure during adolescence will result in long-lasting changes in the region of the brain that controls learning and memory, according to a research team at Duke Medicine that used a rodent model as a surrogate for humans.

The study was published on April 27 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, provides new insights at the cellular level for how alcohol exposure during adolescence, before the brain is fully developed, can result in cellular and synaptic abnormalities that have enduring, detrimental effects on behavior.

"In the eyes of the law, once people reach the age of 18, they are considered adult, but the brain continues to mature and refine all the way into the mid-20s," said lead author Mary-Louise Risher, Ph.D., a post-doctoral researcher in the Duke Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. "It's important for young people to know that when they drink heavily during this period of development, there could be changes occurring that have a lasting impact on memory and other cognitive functions."


Read more detail here

Foetal alcohol syndrome child refused Supreme Court compensation bid

A seven year old girl born with foetal alcohol syndrome has been refused permission to take her case for criminal injuries compensation to the UK Supreme Court.

The girl, whose mother drank excessively while pregnant, was born with severe brain damage.

The Court of Appeal ruled in December that the girl, now in care, was not legally entitled to compensation.

Permission to appeal was refused because an arguable point of law was not raised, the Supreme Court said.

An application was made to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority on her behalf on the basis that the girl was the victim of crime because her mother had administered a noxious substance to her.

The case was originally brought by a council in north-west England, which cannot be named for legal reasons. The Court of Appeal rejected a decision of the First Tier Tribunal awarding her compensation.

Foetal alcohol syndrome
Heavy drinking during pregnancy can lead to foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). This is because alcohol passes across the placenta from the mother to the developing foetus and foetus cannot process alcohol effectively as  the liver is not fully developed. High levels of alcohol can affect the development of organs and the brain.

It is thought that foetuses are most at risk during the first three months of pregnancy when organs are forming - but damage can occur at any time. 

Children with FAS are born with a range of disabilities, are often shorter than average and some have learning and behavioural difficulties. Often there are differences in their facial features such as a flat nose bridge, a small head and a thin upper lip.

The NHS recommend that pregnant women should not drink at all - adding that those who choose to have a drink should have no more than two units of alcohol once or twice a week.

Slow approach to alcohol labelling ‘unacceptable’

The EU’s delay on introducing calorie and nutritional information on alcoholic beverages has been branded “unacceptable” by a European Parliament committee member.

Marc Tarabella, member of parliament’s agricultural and rural development committee, criticised the EU’s slow approach and submitted a question to the commission regarding the matter.

“Europeans are the world’s heaviest drinkers, yet no one knows the amount of calories, the composition or the energy value of what they drink,” Tarabella wrote on The Parliament Magazine.

In 2011, alcoholic beverages were taken out of legislation regarding food labelling to “explore different ways” of communicating the nutritional information of alcoholic products.
However, four years later a solution has not yet been resolved despite expectations of a legislative position to be delivered last year.

“Europe is slow to introduce new regulations – this is unacceptable,” Tarabella said.

“We want drinks to be labelled with a list of ingredients and their energy value. It should be possible, for example, to see how many calories are in a glass or in 100ml.”

He continued to explain that a recent study suggested when calorie information is displayed on bottles and drinks menus customers consumed approximately 400 fewer calories than they would have otherwise.

Furthermore, he highlighted that obesity affects 14 million Europeans and alcohol contributes up to 10% of frequent drinkers’ daily calorie intake.

“This is a question of fighting for consumer protection and safeguarding people’s health,” Tarabella added.

“We should not deprive ourselves of legislation that could help combat obesity or alcoholism.

“I hope the industry will fully cooperate in the development of new legislation. Parliament wants the process to be as transparent as possible and consumers have a right to know.”

Last month, Diageo became the first multi-national drinks firm to voluntarily pledge to print alcohol content and nutrition information per serve on its bottles.

Source: www.thespiritsbusiness.com

 

Discounted wine to cause surge in liver disease among women

A leading liver expert Dr Orla Crosbie has called for a ban on supermarket meal deals that include heavily discounted wine, as medics prepare for a surge in the number of women suffering alcohol- related diseases.

‘dine in for two’ deals offered by major supermarket chains for as little as €14, bottle of wine included, are helping fuel a culture of regular weekday drinking that is leading to an epidemic of liver disease in women.

Dr Orla Crosbie also wants alcohol to be sold separately from groceries in supermarkets in the hope that having to queue for a checkout a second time would deter women from impulse buying.

And she says girls as young as 13 and 14 should be provided with specific alcohol-related education at the time they receive their HPV cervical cancer vaccine in secondary school.

Her calls come in advance of a conference that will hear of growing concerns among health professionals and other campaigners about the increasing toll alcohol is taking on Irish women.

“The bottom line is that more females are drinking than they used to, and they’re drinking more,” Dr Crosbie said. “In Ireland 77% of females drink compared to an average of 68% in other European countries.”

“The other important thing is the increase in the binge drinking culture. Particularly when you look at 18 to 29-year-olds, as many females binge-drink as males which is a complete change in drinking patterns.

Dr Crosbie, a consultant gastroenterologist at Cork University Hospital, said that when she started work with liver cases 20 years ago, it was rare to see a female patient. Now 36% of her patients with alcohol-related cirrhosis (advanced liver damage) are women.

“I did a clinic yesterday with 15 patients, men and women, with general liver problems — not all alcohol-related — but four of those 15 were women, three in their 40s and one in her 50s, with established significant liver disease caused by alcohol. That just didn’t happen 15-20 years ago.
“My concern going into the future would be that we’re going to see more females with alcoholic liver disease than males.”

Her concern mirrors that of other doctors who appeared before the Oireachtas Health Committee in recent weeks to discuss planned new laws for restricting the sale and marketing of alcohol. They said deaths from cirrhosis had doubled in 20 years but the biggest increase was among women.
Women are physically less able to process alcohol than men and their guideline maximum weekly alcohol intake is two-thirds that of men — 14 units compared to 21 — but doctors fear this is being ignored.

The risks of regular excess drinking for women include not just potentially fatal cirrhosis, but an increased likelihood of jaundice, liver tumours, internal bleeding, impaired memory, neurological problems, infertility, miscarriage, foetal alcohol syndrome, and a higher chance of breast cancer.
While alcohol consumption has declined overall in recent years, women buck the trend and there was a 7% increase in wine sales last year which is seen to reflect a mainly female market.

Suzanne Costello of the charity Alcohol Action Ireland, which hosts next Tuesday’s international conference, ‘Girls, Women and Alcohol’ said: “Alcohol is not an equal opportunities product. The impact on women is very different and it needs to be addressed.”

Health Minister Leo Varadkar is before the health committee next Thursday to give a progress report on the new laws which face a race against the clock to be passed before the general election.

Source: www.irishexaminer.com
Image Source www.letstalkwine.com