Yes, crack the whip on imprudent drinkers

Mmegi Editor | Wednesday June 10, 2015 15:21

Such places do not include your house and the beer hall.

The police concern is legitimate. People who offend against the law are in most cases binge drinkers.  Binge drinking and irresponsible behaviour are Siamese twins and neither should be spared in attempts to clean our streets of the indecency that often follows the bacchanalia, which are a daily occurrence.

The police list making noise, common nuisance and other indecent behaviour such as people relieving themselves anywhere as some of the ills that come with binge drinking. But the social, economic and health costs are much higher.

Studies have shown that alcohol kills more people at a young age, compared to other risk factors. The harms that we can associate with binge drinking include among others, drunk people doing stupid things like falling – or jumping - in front of moving vehicles, driving cars into trees, people’s homes, street lights, getting into fights, and killing other people or themselves.

Then there are harms associated with the fact that alcohol is a drug of addiction, which induces addiction at a relatively early age. Nearly all binge drinkers are teenagers and people in their 30s. 

 But then alcohol does not just enter and leave the body. It is known to contain toxins that are directly responsible for damage to a number of systems within the body, including the brain and the liver. It has also been listed as a contributor to development of certain cancers. All these things add to years of life lost by the binge drinker.  If the binge drinker does not die soon enough, they are likely to have a disability arising from irresponsible drinking – an amputated leg, blindness or even alcoholism.

Assuming we decided to turn a blind eye to the harm that binge drinkers bring upon themselves, we would find it impossible to do so when they visit such harm upon us. And they consistently do so. We find innocent people killed in road accidents when the drunks plough into law-abiding drivers and pedestrians. Many of those so carelessly killed are breadwinners, someone’s father, mother, sister or brother.

Once too often, the offenders are unscathed.  If they should fail to cause an accident or insult some elderly person for driving carefully in our clogged roads, the binge drinkers are likely to vent off their frustration at having not been able to display their worst behaviour by urinating or defecating in the streets, on walls, in shop verandahs and passages. They will even do it on your driveway. Binge drinkers have become bolder and ruder and it is time the law cracked its whip.  That will teach offenders that consequences will follow their reckless behaviour.

Today’s thought

“It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the

thirteenth or the fourteenth”

  - George F Burns