Where pubs let you drink till you drop.

last updated 8 January 2015

United Kingdom

Anushka Asthana

Brits don’t need all night to get alarmingly drunk, said Anushka Asthana in the London Observer. Cops and health officials have been wringing their hands over the new Licensing Act, which will allow extended pub hours starting next month. They say “the possibility of 24-hour drinking” will fuel drunken brawling and alcohol poisoning. But with pubs now closing at 11 p.m., Britons just drink frantically fast, and we already are up to our eyeballs in alcoholism, drunken brawls, and other booze-fueled criminality. The problem isn’t the length of time we spend in bars—it’s the amount we chug while we’re there. In theory, bartenders are legally bound to refuse service to anyone who is intoxicated, but they almost never do so. As an experiment, a girlfriend and I ordered round after round of drinks, mostly vodka and tequila, from the same barmaid—about one drink every 20 minutes for three and a half hours. Had we actually drunk it all, it would have been “enough to kill us,” yet the barmaid kept on merrily pouring. Doctors predict that ours will be the “generation with chronic liver damage.” When tens of thousands of drunks start filling hospitals and funeral homes in a few years, the pub industry will have “a lot to answer for.”