Fighting the new evil of binge-drinking scare stories

Here’s the anatomy of a typical binge-drinking scare story.

Last week, the Times​ carried an article headlined Children admit binge-drinking as alcohol abuse figures soar.​ That’s a pretty shocking headline. Direct and unambiguous, impossible to misinterpret. But just to hammer the point home, the article was accompanied by a picture of a drunken teenager (except it’s not really — it’s posed by a model, a stock shot from Getty Images).

The article then goes on to quote a new report from the NHS on Variation in Healthcare for People with Liver Disease​. It’s pretty dry stuff, but on page 64 it gives some recent figures for the number of children who admit to having drunk alcohol within the previous four weeks. These are the figures on which the Times​ bases its report.

The paper claims it’s shocking that 400,000 children (except it exaggerates this to ‘almost half a million’) are drinking alcohol. But look more closely, and these figures are simply a snapshot. Nowhere does the report say whether or not this number represents an increase or a decrease in the number of children drinking alcohol.

So already, we have one level of deliberate obfuscation and sensationalism: the Times​ says the report shows ‘soaring’ binge-drinking figures, when in fact the report shows nothing of the sort.

But hang on — just because the report doesn’t say whether figures are rising or falling doesn’t mean they are not rising. Maybe the Times​ is correct, after all.

A closer examination of the figures in the NHS report reveals they are not from new research at all. The source of the figures, duly quoted in the NHS report, is a 2011 ESPAD (European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs) study across 36 European countries, which investigates ‘substance use among students’ (by which it means schoolchildren).

This report is carried out at regular intervals, so it can be used to show trends over time. So why does the NHS not use the full data range, which would show whether figures are rising or falling? Because if they did, the data would show the percentage of students who have drunk alcohol at least once in the previous month as follows:
■ 1999 — 49%
■ 2007 — 32%
■ 2011 — 26%
The truth is that not only is underage drinking not rising, it is falling dramatically.

Maybe you could argue that this is just one survey. But every other recent survey into underage drinking in the UK shows the same thing, with some reliable data sources suggesting it has halved over the past decade.

By taking incomplete information and then sensationalising it, the Times​ has managed to create a scare story that is the opposite of the truth. Or lies, if you prefer. It really is that simple to convince the UK population that it is facing a binge-drinking epidemic, when it is not. But it is also that simple to take these fabrications apart.

Distortion of the facts​
On the morning the story broke, I couldn’t see the full thing because it was behind the Times’​ paywall. So I tweeted a question, asking if anyone knew the source of the headline. Within minutes, journalist Gavin Aitchison tweeted a link to the report, which is freely available online. Minutes later, [freelance journalist] Phil Mellows had found the page with the figures on. As soon as I checked the source, I realised I’d seen this data before, and referred back to it to remind myself of what the figures actually said.

Given that it is so straightforward to debunk these sensationalist lies, I wonder why only a handful of us can be bothered to do so.

If there is a good reason why the drinks industry does not have a rapid-response press unit that looks into every abuse of data and distortion of the facts and then issues a clear debunking of them, could someone please tell me what it is?

The beer and pub industry has shown it can work together successfully to lobby for the end of the duty escalator. I’d suggest that over time, the inexorable demonisation of drink, and the creation of binge-drinking into a moral panic, will do far more damage to pubs over the long term. I already know people who won’t go to the pub because they think it’s going to be like a Daily Mail​ front page.

Could even one industry body please start telling people the truth? You don’t even have to say anything that might be construed as urging people to drink. You just have to point out the increasingly blatant dishonesty of those who would rather we didn’t.