Mark is married to Jo and is a 23 year old youth and schools worker based in South Cave (near Hull). Mark spent 4 years as a youth worker in Peterborough whilst studying for a degree in youth work & ministry with Oasis.
It’s that time of year again when thousands of people flock off to university either for the first time or 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. times and as they begin the year Fresher’s Week is highly anticipated by many for it’s cheap drinks, late nights and opportunities to get to know people (often in more ways than one).
The Facebook status’ within my friends have already started mentioning the exploits of previous nights and anticipation of future opportunities to go out and get completely bungalowed.
On the other side in the last few months we’ve seen the introduction of the completely ridiculous drinking ASBO and gone from being ‘under 21′ to ‘under 25′ in a desperate attempt to stop those underage buying alcohol. (Surely when they can prove they are 18 they’re gonna got mad?).
Apart from the obvious problem of the drinking ASBO being impossible to actually administrate (is a bar owner going to have a list of mug-shots which he has to refer to before serving a customer?) all of these ways of ‘stopping’ binge drinking seem to once again (surprise, surprise) be reactive rather than proactive.
Let’s put it this way, more young people (and children) are admitted into hospital for alcohol related problems, those underage are getting hold of alcohol and those are can drink are drinking too much and causing violent problems and someone publishes an article on one of the above or some statistics and those in power suddenly think ‘hang on we have a problem’ and come up with a selection of potentially ineffective ways of stopping it.
Surely the problem as a whole is that Britain has a very immature approach to alcohol, student unions encouraging ridiculous games like pub golf and celebrities (who we have no choice but to allow to be role models to young people) getting wasted simply says ‘it’s okay to get drunk’ yet somehow we forget to point out that excess of alcohol causes huge problems, for example girls are far more likely to have unprotected sex when under the influence of alcohol.
In my opinion the only way too get over this problem is to encourage student unions, universities and night clubs to take a mature approach to alcohol and their club evenings and not encourage ridiculous drinking and perhaps more importantly we need to remind potential role models that they are role models, whether that’s parents, teachers or youth workers who get drunk or celebrities who area featured and laughed at in the papers for falling over or climbing a hedge or whatever when drunk.
When people make the decision or end up in the public eye as a role model we need to encourage them to be a good role model and at the same time the media needs to stop glorifying drunkenness as headlines for the sake of society and the celebrity. A front page headline of Kerry Katona snorting cocaine or another celebrity being arrested for drunken violence doesn’t help the individual or the world.
