Young drinkers clog hospitals

KIRK HARGREAVES/The Press

TOO BUSY: Dr Scott Pearson says Christchurch Hospital deals with young binge-drinking casualties every weekend.

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Emergency department (ED) doctors are calling for the alcohol-purchase age to be raised as hospitals become increasingly clogged with young drunks.

One ED has reported a doubling in patient numbers on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights as young people flood the department grossly intoxicated or bearing wounds from drunken fights.

Wellington ED specialist Paul Quigley said most of the extra patients were suffering from alcohol-related injuries.

"Young people should not be coming to ED generally," he said. "This stuff is all preventable and it's very frustrating when you have people with heart pains or serious respiratory problems having to wait because staff are dealing with teenagers who have broken their wrist or been in a fight because they are drunk."

Quigley is an international expert in emergency responses to drug and alcohol abuse and has compiled statistics on the impact of alcohol on his ED.

He said "90 per cent of presentations" by people aged under 30 during weekend night shifts were directly related to alcohol.

Many of the young patients showed little remorse for their drunken antics.

"They're just like, `Cool, I've got a plaster and I'll get time off work or school'," he said.

EDs around the country were experiencing unprecedented demand on their services, Quigley said.

The impact of youth drinking, which seemed to have increased since the purchase age was dropped to 18, was putting unnecessary pressure on staff and patients.

He wanted a split purchase age introduced, where people had to be 20 to buy alcohol from an off-licence but could drink on licensed premises from 18.

A split purchase age would be a positive step.

It would send the message that drinking in licensed, supervised premises, and with food, was acceptable at a younger age.

He would also like the Government to introduce a minimum price per unit of alcohol to counter bargain prices on high-strength alcohol and "alcopops" targeted at teenagers.

Christchurch ED specialist Scott Pearson said the alcohol- purchase age should be 20.

His ED dealt with scores of young people injured or ill because of binge drinking every weekend, and lowering the purchase age to 18 had undoubtedly "increased the carnage".

"We get very young people who have been naive and gone on a big binge. They come in here after a friend or someone else has found them unconscious," he said.

"Their greatest risk is if they vomit and don't expel it, and they suffocate.

"We get someone like that probably every weekend," Pearson said.

The department saw about 220 patients on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and at least one-third were treated for alcohol-related problems.

Resources spent on alcohol-related injuries and disease meant less spent on other areas of health, Pearson said.

Drunken patients also upset staff and visitors.

The age of intoxicated people arriving at the department had dropped noticeably over the past decade, with the youngest being about 12, he said.

- © Fairfax NZ News