super-strength alcohol
Homeless people ‘drinking themselves to death’
with super-strength alcohol.
Charity calls for higher tax on super-strength lagers and ciders that kill more homeless people than heroin or crack cocaine
Rebecca Smithers – Tuesday 16 October 2012
Jo Milligan in his room at Thames Reach’s Graham House hostel in Vauxhall, south London. Photograph: Martin Godwin.
Jo Milligan is slumped across the bare mattress of his single bed, awake but clearly undisturbed by the deafening roar and fumes of four lanes of traffic through the open window of the tiny bedroom. On a low table are an ashtray, cigarettes and a half-drunk can of Skol Super (9% abv) lager; it is early afternoon and he is already on his third can of the day in addition to a large bottle of cider.
“I’m trying to cut down to just six cans a day from seven,” he slurs, barely able to see me because of the cataracts in both eyes, which will eventually lead to complete blindness if he does not have surgery. His last scheduled operation at nearby St Thomas’s hospital did not materialise because he breached the necessary NHS detox programme that was a pre-condition of the medical treatment.
So three weeks ago, Milligan returned here – Graham House Thames Reach hostel in Vauxhall – one of the largest homelessness hostels in London with rooms for 69 “residents” and – currently – seven dogs. Here, Thames Reach – one of the UK’s leading homelessness charities – tries to help Milligan and others like him by giving them a roof over their heads and access to professional help and medical care, which will – in some but not all cases – lead to detoxification and rehabilitation elsewhere.
Place of extremes
This autumn, the charity is stepping up warnings that its life-saving work is being made even more challenging by the prevalence of super-strength lagers such as Skol Super, Carlsberg Special Brew and Tennent’s Super. Cheaper and more intoxicating than wine and spirits, these have become the drink of choice for people with an alcohol problem who gather in small groups on the streets to drink. Ranging between 7.5% and 10% in strength, these potentially deadly lagers and ciders are, according to the charity’s research, now killing more homeless people than heroin or crack cocaine.
In another hostel (not run by Thames Reach) 21 former rough sleepers died over two years probably from the health problems created by these super-strength drinks. Liver failure and brain damage – including Korsakoff’s syndrome, which leads to the familiar “shuffling” – are the grim long-term result, along with regular seizures and double incontinence.
Jeremy Swain, chief executive of Thames Reach, says: “These people are literally drinking themselves to death. These super-strength lagers and ciders were not around in the 80s and 90s, and they have no place in society today. It is scandalous that the drinks industry is making money from the most vulnerable and troubled members of our society.”
In the last year, Swain says that at least 17 Thames Reach clients from a variety of projects, including supported housing, died from drinking super-strenth alcohol, although the deaths could arguably have been from other factors as well as excessive drinking. To help address the problem, Thames Reach is about to start research with homelessness charities across England to establish how many deaths are being caused by super-strength alcoholic drinks.
Another significant new trend is that people are dying younger, Swain adds. “We are losing people in their early 40s rather than at 65. But many of them look much older because of the ravages of super-strength alcohol.” Swain has witnessed the emergence of a new group of middle-aged people – the “young olds” – who have developed the health problems more commonly associated with people long past retirement age: poor mobility, memory loss and incontinence. Milligan, for example, looks as though he is in his early 60s but is only 38.
Graham House is a “wet” rather than a “dry” facility, which means that residents are able to drink alcohol here. Many spend most of their time confined to their rooms, which are locked to prevent other residents wandering in. The hostel’s senior practitioner, Sonja Sullivan, explains that the whiff in the corridor outside their rooms is because the residents have become doubly incontinent as a result of their drinking.
Many wander round the communal areas, all with cans in hand, some slumped against the walls in corridors. Their alcohol dependence is so serious that if they were told they could not drink here they would simply leave and head back to their old haunts on the streets. This a place of extremes, where most of the residents have come after becoming homeless as the result of catastrophic personal trauma – prison, offending, abuse and bereavement as well as drug and alcohol addiction.
Paul Cachia, alcohol case worker with the charity Foundation 66, runs tailored sessions at Graham House, warning the residents of the dangers of long-term drinking and helping those who make the crucial decision to accept professional help. “Nearly all my clients here are drinking 200 units of alcohol or more a week,” he explains. “When you compare that with a weekly limit of 14 for women and 21 for men, that means my clients are drinking 10 times over safe limits. You have to be realistic about what they can achieve. For many it is about harm minimisation or reduction, and this is where the problem with super-strength comes in.”
The cheap price is, of course, key to the attraction of the super-strength drinks. As a condition of its licence, the new Emerald supermarket opposite the hostel agreed not to stock alcohol stronger than 6.5% abv, and Swain believes that such community partnerships could be the way forward in encouraging retailers to take the offending super-strength liquors off the shelves. The charity is also backing a recent initiative in which retailers are voluntarily destocking their shelves – the first of its kind in the UK. Ideally, he would like a major supermarket to “take a stand” on the issue.
Accepting that a complete ban of super-strength alcohol may be unrealistic, Thames Reach is calling on the government to increase the tax on the most harmful products, perhaps offset by taxing weaker ones less. It also believes the drinks industry and wholesale companies need to regulate themselves more responsibly – and if they fail, should be regulated by others. Significantly, after a visit to the hostel two years ago, brewery giant Heineken halted the production of its super-strength ciders.
But another problem is when wholesale companies flood inner-city off licences with super-strength ciders such as White Ace. These come in three-litre bottles, containing a massive 22.5 units of alcohol for as little as £3.99, only 17p per unit and less than half of the government’s proposed minimum price of 40p per unit.
Of those persuaded to enter alcohol treatment or switch to weaker brews, some do get their lives back on track. There have been “fantastic” success stories at the hostel, according to Cachia. One female client in her early 40s had been haemorrhaging from the oesophagus in a “life and death situation’‘, he explained. “She was in intensive care when I assessed her and had only 20% of her liver function – another drink would have killed her,” he said. “She came back to this wet hostel and stayed sober for a year before moving on. I have just given her a reference and she has apparently been accepted to study for a law degree. In the year and a half that I have been here we have had about six people who have gone through treatment and have moved on. That is six lives that have been turned round.”
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