Children As Young As Eight Treated For Drink

More than 100 children a week are being treated in Scottish accident and emergency departments for problems caused by alcohol abuse.

An official NHS survey found pupils as young as eight are being rushed to hospital intoxicated or suffering injuries as a result of drunken assaults or falls.

Leading experts described the situation as alarming and said the figures revealed the scale of Scotland’s drink problem.

It is the first time that the demand underage drinkers are placing on the NHS has been studied in detail in Scotland and possibly the UK.

During a five-week period, nurses in 21 Scottish hospitals logged details of patients under the age of 18 arriving with health issues caused by drink. In that time 648 young people, including 15 under-12s, were treated for alcohol-related conditions.

These patients had drunk an average 13 units, or six pints, in the 24 hours before they needed treatment and almost one-quarter claimed they had also used other substances, with Ecstasy being the most popular choice.

One in 10 had previous incidents with alcohol recorded in their past medical history.

Dr William Morrison, a consultant in emergency medicine and chair of the steering group behind the project, said the problems such behaviour was storing for the future were frightening.

And Dr Linda de Caestecker, director of public health for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, admitted: “The growing levels of alcohol misuse among the young and very young are increasingly alarming.”

Dr Morrison added: “Alcohol plays a significant role in a myriad of social problems and inflicts an incalculable human cost. The figures tell a stark tale – Scotland has a serious alcohol problem.”

With some hospitals missing from the data, Dr Morrison warned the study findings were likely to be an underestimate and said during his 15 years working in A&E the problem of under-age drinking had grown.

“There’s always been the odd child coming to the department who’s raided their parents’ drink cupboard, or whose big brother has bought them half a bottle of vodka,” he said. “It’s not something that’s completely new, but, in terms of the frequency, it’s increased.”

He described treating children who were so deeply unconscious they were in danger of vomiting into their lungs and dying.

Alcohol consumption has increased among adults during the past decade, rising by 23%. The consequences are already worrying. There have been huge rises in deaths from liver cirrhosis and research suggests drink misuse is costing the Scottish economy more than £1bn a year.

Experts often link the ready availability of cheap liquor to this trend and Dr Morrison felt this could also explain the growing problem among the young.

He said poor parenting was sometimes to blame but often this was not the case.

He continued: “In my experience with children of this age group with intoxication on a Friday or Saturday night, when you phone the majority of parents are horrified.”

Spirits, followed by cider, were the most popular drinks consumed by children whose details were captured in the Scottish study.