As an A&E doctor who still occasionally rides an MTB I probably have the right to an opinion on this….
I don’t mind treating anyone who turns up, it’s kinda what I get paid for. However it annoys me having to treat people who turn up for no other reason than they are absolutely wasted. I don’t mind if you have had a few drinks and fallen over, it happens to the best of us, but if your only complaint is that you have got so drunk that you’ve shit yourself I’m not entirely sure how that suddenly becomes my problem.
With regard to the ‘people injure themselves getting fit’ argument I disagree. People don’t go out on their bikes with the express intent of injuring themselves, these are called accidents; people do go out on a night out with the express intent of getting so wasted they can no longer stand/getting into a fight.
Minimum pricing – this, I think, would be a good idea. There are bars in the city where I work where you can get a treble and a mixer for under £2. This, plus other ‘Happy Hour’ type drinks promotions, encourages people to drink far more than is sensible, in too short a period of time. I accept that there is an argument for peoples liberty to do as they please, as put forward by Emsz above, but a large proportion of society have repeatedly shown that they will not take responsibility for their own actions, and this is where the government has to step in. Minimum pricing would not affect most peoples drinking but it would mean that a subsection of our society would be able to afford either less shots on a night out, or less nights out; both of these are good things.
Cynic-al – drugs are on the whole very cheap. Cheaper than a night on the lash. Ecstasy currently retails at a fiver for two pills in my neck of the woods and heroin is down to around four quid a wrap, cocaine is around £20 a gramme. It is being addicted and requiring ever increasing doses and not having a job that makes it seem expensive. (FWIW I wish the government would get around to legalising and controlling ecstasy as I very rarely see anyone who has taken too many E’s and got in a fight/fallen over and shit themselves.)
As for the costs…. It’s not just the alleged £90 per taxpayer, which must include chronic alcohol related problems as most of the inebriated I see don’t actually require anything doing other than paring in a wheelchair and keeping an eye on until they are sober enough to clean up their own vomit/poo (yes, we do make them). However, it’s not just the monetary costs, I do have to spend some time making sure that these people are actually just drunk and not injured/hypoglycaemic etc. This time could be better spent doing something more useful, like looking after your gran in cubicle seven while she has a heart attack……
Anyway, enough prattling on from me…. Any questions?
