What's more, Professor Hobbs argues, it is the logic of the market and not the logic derived from careful data analysis that informs government policy on alcohol. As a society, we embrace the 'night-time economy' – and the jobs, urban regeneration and taxation that the industry generates – while seeking to punish the routine transgressions of its primary consumers.
Hobbs notes that the term 'binge drinking' is rarely used to describe the drinking habits of anyone other than young denizens of the night-time economy. Binge drinking is seldom linked with alcohol-related diseases, with accidents in the home or with domestic violence. Indeed, since publication of the government's alcohol strategy, where a binge drinker is described as someone who drinks to get drunk, the term has become a remarkably pliant device to implicate individuals perhaps more accurately described as 'young people drunk and disorderly in public places'.
As such, binge drinkers are indispensable folk devils. They are noisy, urinate in public and violent. This brings them into conflict with an undermanned police force, which can be depicted on most nights of the week wrestling heroically with foul-mouthed, vomit-stained youths in an attempt to restore the city centre to daytime levels of comportment.
Despite alcohol being our drug of choice, the source is not typically regarded as a problem. Alcohol is a legal drug and so there are no attempts to bring down the 'Mr Bigs' of the alcohol industry. Indeed, the main dealers are ensconced with the police and politicians in crime reduction committees and urban regeneration partnerships.
Until the 2001 general election campaign, there was a general reluctance on behalf of government agencies to acknowledge problems related to the night-time economy. But Labour's campaign that year coincided with new figures on alcohol-related assaults uncovered by the British Crime Survey, which indicated that teenage males who frequently visit pubs and clubs and drink heavily are most at risk from violent assault.
Yet government statements about the night-time economy remain guarded in relation to links with violence. This reluctance needs to be understood in the context of investment in the night-time economy running at £1 billion a year and growing at an annual rate of 10%, with the turnover of the pub and club industry constituting 3% of GDP, numbers of licensed premises having increased by over 30% during the past 25 years and the sector employing around one million people, creating 'one in five of all new jobs'.
The night-time economy has had a transformative influence on UK cities, and is part of our society's shift from industrial to post-industrial economic development. Successive governments have embraced this new economy as an alternative to the nation's increasingly decrepit manufacturing base, and proud city centre shrines to our industrial past have been revitalised by shiny outlets for alcohol consumption.
The numbers of young people flocking into these new centres of alcohol consumption are unprecedented. For example, in 1997, the licence capacity of Nottingham's tiny city centre was 61,000: by 2004, that had risen to 108,000, while Manchester city centre has a stunning capacity of 250,000.
The Labour Party signalled its intention to embrace the night-time economy during the 1997 general election, when they solicited the student vote with text messages that read: 'Cldnt gve a XXXX 4 lst ordrs? Thn vte Labr on thrsday 4 extra time'.
As the new decade progressed, the real story behind the '24-hour society' began to emerge, and the concentration of huge numbers of young alcohol consumers has created environments where aggressive hedonism and disorder is the norm.
But rather than reject a major facet of their own economic policies, and recognise the night-time economy as a criminogenic zone that was having a negative impact on their own crime and social order targets, official discussion has focused on the problematic consumer in the 'tired and emotional' shape of the binge drinker.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party's infamous text message has been operationalised in the form of revolutionary changes in the nation's licensing laws. But the entire research community was opposed to the Act, citing evidence that to have an impact on alcohol-related harm, it is vital to reduce consumption by imposing more extensive controls rather than fewer. Yet despite its insistence on 'evidence-based' policy-making, the government's agenda of liberalisation of the retailing of alcohol continues unabated.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Dick Hobbs on 0191 334 2804 or Email: dick.hobbs@durham.ac.uk
Romesh Vaitilingam on 07768 661095
Or Lance Cole, Lesley Lilley or Becky Gammon at ESRC on 01793 413032/413119/413122
NOTES FOR EDITORS
1. 'Gluttony: 'Binge drinking' and the binge economy' by Dick Hobbs is chapter 5 in Seven Deadly Sins: A new look at society through an old lens. The author is at the University of Durham. The ESRC report is published to launch Social Science Week 2005, which takes place across the UK from 20-24 June. The week is about highlighting research from the UK's social scientists and how this can contribute to better policymaking and, ultimately, a better society. It is an initiative from the Economic and Social Research Council. For a programme of events: www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/socialscienceweek
2. The ESRC report is published to launch Social Science Week 2005, which takes place across the UK from 20-24 June. The week is about highlighting research from the UK's social scientists and how this can contribute to better policymaking and, ultimately, a better society. It is an initiative from the Economic and Social Research Council. For a programme of events: www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/socialscienceweek
3. The ESRC is the UK's largest funding agency for research and postgraduate training relating to social and economic issues. It provides independent, high-quality, relevant research to business, the public sector and government. The ESRC invests more than £76 million every year in social science and at any time is supporting some 2,000 researchers in academic institutions and research policy institutes. It also funds postgraduate training within the social sciences to nurture the researchers of tomorrow. More at www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk
4. ESRC Society Today offers free access to a broad range of social science research and presents it in a way that makes it easy to navigate and saves users valuable time. As well as bringing together all ESRC-funded research (formerly accessible via the Regard website) and key online resources such as the Social Science Information Gateway and the UK Data Archive, non-ESRC resources are included, for example the Office for National Statistics. The portal provides access to early findings and research summaries, as well as full texts and original datasets through integrated search facilities. More at http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk