'Off-trade booze sales set to overtake pubs next year'
"Beer sales in supermarkets and off-licences are set to overtake the amount sold in pubs next year. Cash-strapped Britons are increasingly turning to drinking cheap booze at home. Turnover in pubs is slumping and 52 are closing every week. The amount of beer pubs sold was down 10 per cent in May. Sales of wine and spirits are also down. Pubs' best hope of reversing the trend is tempting in drinkers to watch World Cup matches next year, said Graham Page of market analysts Nielsen." - The Mirror
"Deals forcing licensees to buy beer from their pub company landlords could be investigated by the Office of Fair Trading. The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) lodged a 'super complaint' with the watchdog amid warnings the contracts threaten many boozers with 'extinction'. Camra reckons tied-in tenants pay 50p a pint over the-odds - with drinkers the ultimate victims. The complaint comes as 52 pubs a week are already closing." - Sunday Mirror
"Children as young as 11 are drinking the equivalent of 15 shots of vodka a week. An NHS survey of children between 11 and 15 last year found that one in six - an estimated 550,000 - said they had drunk alcohol in the previous week. Their average consumption was 14.6 units - equal to a pint of beer a day. Though the proportion of children who drink was down on 2007, the amount they knocked back increased by almost two units - equivalent to a pint of beer a week - and was twice as high as in 1990. The survey found that children are much more likely to drink if there is another drinker in their family." - Mail on Sunday
"A bid to overturn a smoking ban at a high-security psychiatric hospital has been rejected by the Appeal Court. Two patients, who were not identified in court, wanted smoking rooms inside Rampton in Nottinghamshire. Lawyers for the patients said the ban - introduced in 2007 - meant they were the only people in the country not allowed to smoke 'in the privacy of their own home'. But Lord Clarke, Master of the Rolls, upheld the ban and said it was a legitimate aim to restrain a person's human rights for the protection of health." - Sunday Mirror
