LDAAT Social Marketing Campaigns
"The Big Drink Debate" Campaign
The biggest ever survey on alcohol in the North West has recently been published. Titled “The Big Drink Debate”, the research is an attempt to understand why the region has one of the biggest alcohol problems in the country.
Alarmingly more than a quarter of the 30,000 respondents admitted to drinking at harmful or even hazardous levels, the highest in the country. The harm alcohol causes to individuals and communities includes increases in hospital admissions and crime.
Deaths from alcohol related diseases have doubled in the North West in a generation and the region’s hospitals admit one person every seven minutes with an alcohol related condition. In addition, figures from the Association of Public Health Observatories indicates around half of Lancashire districts are worse than the national average for alcohol and tobacco related issues.
This latest data underlines the importance of the work that LDAAT and its’ partners are engaged in across Lancashire to reduce the harm caused by alcohol, particularly amongst young people. Government guidance recommends that education about alcohol should start at primary school, before drinking patterns become established. And the fact that Alcohol Concern research also shows that admissions amongst under 14 year olds for alcoholic poisoning continue to rise lend even more weight to the Government’s priority of targeting town centre drinkers (18 -24 year olds).