Four drinks and it's a binge

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

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Okay its Australia but we probably won't be far behind.

New Australian national guidelines, due in July, are to reclassify a "binge" has having four or more standard drinks in one drinking session. This equates roughly to four mid-sized beers, or three glasses of wine.

Jon Currie, head of the National Health and Medical Research Council, said that whilst two drinks would be the limit for both males and females, the old safe limit for men of four drinks would be the absolute maximum.

This move comes from the Rudd government, whom ex-federal health minister Tony Abbott has accused of spreading a "moral panic". Ann Roche, an addiction expert, claims Facebook and MySpace fuel binge drinking, which she says "glamorises" the act.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23866501-421,00.html

Also is it Australia that has a zero drink & driving law?
 
I think it's only zero for a couple of years after passing - sure someone will be along to correct me if I'm wrong though.

Nice to have a reference point -

"That was a binge and half last night!"

"I think you'll find it was 2.5 binges actually..."
 
personally i'd love to see a zero tolerance on drink limit, because it'd save a lot of confusion on alcohol levels,

as for "binge" drinking, you're either an alcoholic. in that your drinking every day, your a binge drinker because you drink on weekends and more of it, or your not a drinker lol....
 
so being slightly tipsy is binge drinking? unless a "normal" drink is a quadruple measure of spirits that is.
 
Jest3r said:
personally i'd love to see a zero tolerance on drink limit, because it'd save a lot of confusion on alcohol levels,

as for "binge" drinking, you're either an alcoholic. in that your drinking every day, your a binge drinker because you drink on weekends and more of it, or your not a drinker lol....
Click to expand...

you can't have zero, the body can produce alcohol naturally. Zero would cause to much confusion and hassle.
 
Load of rubbish, people have been going out an getting drunk for years. Now some middle class **** who thinks everyone should be as boring as them has given it a name and sensationalised it to be bad and oh shock horror look what happens.
I ignore it, and finish my 5th bottle of jacques fruit cider.

Part of being active in my day was drinking, no wonder so many kids are becoming obese. If its deemed a bad thing by a load of misguided idiots.
 
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Well what importance does the word 'binge' have exactly?? I would be more worried at the number of units 4 drinks is compared to what the police will no doubt soon consider "drunk and disorderly" etc :eek:
 
Going to be interesting if this is brought in as well as the current legislation Scottish parliament is looking at with making Off-Sales for over-21s only. Bet the students are going to love that.
 
I fail to see the problem with this...

Does it mean that it will be illegal to have more than 4 drinks?

No.

So what's the problem?

If you're talking about how much you can drink before driving though, that's simple. Lemonade please :)
 
8 units is, to be fair, more than you would want to be drinking on a "school night". I think it has got to be taken in some kind of context not blown out of all proportion. 8 units in the pub on a week night will be "fine" in terms of driving etc the next morning and although doing that 3 or 4 nights a week isn't going to be good for you, once every so often isn't a bad thing healthwise either.

MORE than 8 units is getting risky- so 4 pints of an average lager or so is 12 units which is probably going to put you on the road at rush hour with alcohol in your bloodstream (although not enough to get you prosecuted). More than that and you'll be asking for trouble.

I don't think these people have any real objection to drinking to excess providing that you keep those occasional excesses in moderation. I go out and get very, very drunk (through enjoying what I am drinking rather than drinking to get drunk) but thats only a few times a year - if you have a 40+ unit night out every Saturday, its fairly obvious you are on a fast road to having some serious health issues.

In the UK there seems to be this overbearing pressure to drink more and more which has, over time, lead to people thinking that anything less than 10 pints and you might as well not have bothered. Once that sort of seed starts to grow, generations of people after that see drinking massively as the 'norm' and hence the reaction to any suggestion that 8 units is perhaps overcooking it if done regularly.
 
4 beers in one sitting has been defined as a binge over here for years.
I remember because a few years back I was an official binge drinker, having 8+ units maybe once or twice a week.

Whereas now I rarely binge drink, yet consume more alchohol (20+ units a week total but spread out).
 
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