Drinking will cause 210,000 deaths in the next 20 years

Senior doctors call for cheap booze to be banned

Alcohol will be the cause of 210,000 UK deaths in the next 20 years, according to senior doctors.

Today, two of Britain’s alcohol specialists, Professor Ian Gilmore and Dr Nick Sheron, called for Government action to halt this ‘shameful, preventable loss of life’ by introducing a new minimum price for alcohol.

Worryingly, doctors warned that in the next two decades alone liver disease will claim 70,000 lives and another 140,000 from strokes, heart attacks, cancers, violence, suicides and drink-related accidents.

The introduction of the 24-hour drinking law in 2005 failed to stop partygoers binge drinking in the hours before closing time.

As supermarkets continue to slash the price of booze, last year’s Health Service figures found that 1.2 million hospital admissions were alcohol related.

According to Dr Sheron on BBC Panorama, liver disease is now the only major cause of death that is continuing to rise.

‘We have adopted the Mediterranean drinking pattern, so people will frequently drink with meals,' he says. 'But we haven’t lost our "feast" drinking pattern, so everyone likes to go out and get caned on a Friday night as well.'

He also revealed that of the people he treats for cirrhosisof the liver, half are female, demonstrating the recent rise in alcoholism and binge drinking among women.

Sheron’s warning comes just days after David Cameron announced his plan to clamp down on binge drinking in Britain by outlawing the sale of cheap alcohol.

The Prime Minster says he hoped to follow Scotland’s proposal to make supermarkets and pubs charge 45p per unit of alcohol they sold.

Disturbing, alcohol-related injuries and illnesses currently cost the NHS ₤2.7 billion a year.

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