Tue Jan 2, 10:39 AM ET
From Yahoo!.com

LONDON (Reuters) - Attempts to wean Britons away from binge drinking toward a more continental European "cafe style" culture may never work because too many like getting drunk, a cabinet minister said Sunday.

"I don't know whether we'll ever get to be in a European drinking culture, where you go out and have a single glass of wine," Labor Party chair Hazel Blears said.

"Maybe its our Anglo-Saxon mentality. We actually enjoy getting drunk," she told the Sunday Times newspaper in an interview.

Britain introduced extended drinking hours last November in a bid to tackle the country's binge drinking problem where people consumed large amounts of alcohol in a short space of time.

Proponents of the changes to the licensing laws had argued it would usher in more civilized drinking habits like those of France or Spain.

But as pubs and clubs prepare for the second New Year's Eve under the new laws, there has been little sign that people are drinking more responsibly.

Blears said the continued binge drinking culture was worrying.

"People are getting quite serious health conditions earlier -- things like liver problems in their twenties and thirties that perhaps before only came out in their forties and fifties."

Blears, a former junior Home Office minister responsible for tackling problem drinking, told the newspaper more needed to be done to educate people about the dangers of alcohol abuse.

In May a survey by University College London found that Britain had the worst problem with anti-social behavior in Europe, often fueled by alcohol. London's Ambulance Service said it had noted a 3 percent rise in call-outs to drink-related medical incidents.

In addition the number of middle-aged men drinking themselves to death has more than doubled since 1991. Men aged between 35 and 54 have suffered the biggest rise in alcohol-related deaths, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Deaths among women in the same age group also nearly doubled and health service figures show the number of children admitted to hospital because of alcohol had jumped over 20 percent in five years.

s'true

Its definitely true. I used to be a big drinker but now I have health problems and I can't drink. When I'm out with people and I tell them that their reaction is literally horror- they always go "Oh my god, that must be awful, I could never go out if I couldn't get drunk. When can you drink again? God you must miss it so much!" As if you can't have a good time unless you are heaving your last down the side of some kebab van Its really quite sad. And such a long spell of not drinking makes me never want to do it again- when I'm out now and I see my friends make complete fools of themselves cause they are totally unattractively wasted. A girl I know (not a friend I hasten to add) was so drunk she actually WET HERSELF on the tube two weeks ago. So grim. We have a problem as a nation.

it completely is. There is a culture in this country that condones and even encourages people to drink. It's also completely normal here to go out on the weekend just to get pissed up.

I remember acting this way in high school in canada, but you get over it and drink responsibly as the years go by. This change doesn't seem to happen here.

I'm not a big drinker, I hate beer and generally would prefer to sip baileys and restrict myself to a couple drinks on a night out and cut myself off at the first sign of tipsy. I'm always really concerned at the fact that I usually have a trip home on tube and train to consider and doing it in a coherent state means I'll get home safe. I find myself drinking even less here though to compensate for the people that are completely shitfaced drunk because I worry about them and their safety.

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It is true adn it sucks.