It’s a Saturday night. Like most Saturday nights almost anywhere in Britain, a number of the town’s residents have been to the pubs and bars for anything up to 4 or 5 hours. There’s an intermittent cacophony of whooping and giddy laughter for around half an hour as the revellers return home in zigzagging lines of drunken unawareness. It’s safe to say a number of them will wake up feeling rather rough, and many will vow never to drink again, until at least the next weekend, when the whole act is repeated.

A number of visitors to Britain as a whole are shocked and somewhat confused by the booze culture that seems to exist here. It isn’t confined to the British Isles, either. A large number of ‘18-30’ holidaymakers descending on places such as Kos and Zante bring that booze culture with them, and a trawl through the darker depths of late-night digital television channels throws up programmes with titles like ‘Boozed-up Brits Abroad,’ of which the content is fairly self explanatory. This alarming trend for glorifying alcohol isn’t a recent development. Reports of alcohol-fuelled ‘initiations’ for university societies and sports clubs are becoming more and more common. ‘Carnage UK,’ a group that organises student events throughout England has been repeatedly criticised for actively promoting excessive drinking, something the group itself denies, claiming that individual university student unions were far more likely to offer cheaper drinks deals than were available during the ‘Carnage’ events.

In terms of underage drinking in Britain, and in Scotland especially, there are some quite alarming statistics. Alcohol Statistics Scotland 2005 reported that 40% of 15 year-old boys and 46% of 15 year-old girls had admitted drinking in the previous week. Even more worryingly, the numbers of 13 year-olds drinking doubled between 1990 and 2004. From another reports on alcohol statistics in Scotland, 93% of men and 87% of women aged 16-74 drink alcohol, with 74% of men and 53% of women having had a drink in the last week. The main problem seems to centre on the difficulties of reducing the amount people drink, or making drinkers more aware of the effects, both long and short term, of alcohol. Drinks deals in bars and supermarkets certainly don’t help. On an average Friday night out, I personally might drink more than I would normally, but not to the point that I'd lose control. Sadly, it’s not unusual to come across several people like that on a night out. The arguments for it are that it’s a way of relieving stress and unwinding. The reality is that it doesn’t really provide anything positive in the long run.

Perhaps the aptly-titled ‘beer pressure,’ in which we feel pressured to drink because our friends are drinking is one cause for the apparent booze culture in this country, or maybe drinking is seen as de rigueur when on a night out. The fact remains that there isn't a black and white answer to why, as a nation, we drink so much.

The recent changes in licensing laws in Scotland, particularly the regulation of the hours of sale and the limitations on drinks deals, suggest that the issue of the ‘booze culture’ is finally being addressed, though there will undoubtedly continue to be alcohol related incidents, whether it be drink-driving, poor decision-making or violent incidents. It’s heartening to see the Scottish Parliament taking steps to try and regulate the sale and consumption of alcohol, but is it too little too late?