Is Wolverhampton really abstinence city?

The news Wolverhampton is officially the most sober city in England comes as a surprise, it has to be said.

Middle-class boozers of Woking and Guildford may knock back more than their fair share of Chardonnay.

But the claim Wolverhampton has fewer “hazardous drinkers” than anywhere else is worthy of investigation.

Alas, Abstinence City, as Wolverhampton may now be known, has yet to have a sobering effect on me. It seems I’m a “hazardous drinker”.

Last week I consumed a shameful 23 units of alcohol. “Red” Dawn Primarolo, the Chief of the Health Police, says it’s got to stop.

It’s bad for me, she nags. It’ll cost the NHS trillions, shorten my life and get me into trouble.

I blame the boozing on the fact that the Health Police finally forced me to quit smoking. So my alcohol consumption is up. I also eat more.

Any day now the Health Police will break down my door in the dead of night and remove all those Mars Bars from the fridge.

There’s no pleasure is so innocent the Health Police aren’t issuing words of warning, official “advice” or proposals to ban it.

Soon, bottles of plonk will carry health warnings. We’ll pay “fat tax” on fish and chips.

Smoking cigarettes, even in the privacy of your own shed at the bottom of the garden, will be an offence punishable by not less than six months imprisonment.

Soon it will be against the law to have sex until your proposed partner can produce a Certificate of Clean Living from the Health Police (unless they have AIDS, of course, in which case you get a free condom and official understanding).

The attack on our modest pleasures is allegedly “a wake-up call to older drinkers who don't binge drink, but instead regularly come home after work and open a bottle of wine”.

Of course, after all that vino most of us have fallen asleep in front of the telly so the warning may fall on deaf ears.

Even so, does Wolverhampton really have fewer “hazardous drinkers” than anywhere else?

The researchers say only 16 per cent of people in Wolverhampton are guilty of hazardous drinking compared with, say, the 26 per cent in posh Runnymede near where Elton John lives.

The Department of Health number-crunchers have other news as well. They suggest a link between Wolverhampton’s abstemiousness and the way petty criminals are dealt with.

In Wolverhampton, 24 Anti-Social Behaviour Orders are issued per 1,000 people. That compares with a national average of just 7.7 per 1,000 people (a booze centre like Harrogate is down there at 6.4).

Does that mean the answer to “hazardous drinking” is ASBOs to keep boozers off the streets?

Unfortunately, no. In Wolverhampton, 12 alcohol-related crimes are committed for every 1,000 people in the city. In Harrogate, it’s only four crimes per 1,000.

Worse still, “hazardous drinking” isn’t really terribly hazardous. The figures show Wolverhampton men die 13 months and two weeks early because of the booze. The city’s women lose six months of life.

Thanks to the drink, the average West Midland man dies 11 months early; the average woman five months too soon.

Nationally the figures are ten months and four months respectively. But in the “hazard drink” capital of the South East all that wine only takes eight months and two weeks from a man’s life and three months three weeks off a woman’s.

Which only goes to show you can prove just about anything with statistics.

Meanwhile home-boozers like me will carry on exceeding the recommended dose.

There is, though, a fundamental question which Red Dawn and the Health Police tend to avoid. That is whether the warnings mean anything anyway.

The Health Police say we’re guilty of “hazardous drinking” if a man exceeds 21 units of alcohol a week. A woman can only “safely” have 14 units. A unit is half a pint of beer or lager while a small glass of wine is 1.5 units.

It turns out, though, that these limits are made-up. They have zero scientific credibility.

One who knows is Richard Smith. He was on the Royal College of Physicians' working party responsible 20 years ago for this work of fiction.

He admits: “Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee.”

How can anyone use the words “intelligent” and “committee” in the same sentence and retain a shred of credibility?

Of course too much drink is bad for us. So are too many Big Macs. That shouldn’t put us off them completely. The Government should mind its own business.

Every drinker thinks he knows when he’s had enough. I rely on my ability to say “the Leith police dismisseth us” without slurring the words as infallible proof that I am as sober as Red Dawn herself.

Perhaps I should amend it to: “The health police arresteth us.” It’s almost as much of a tongue-twister and, alas, closer to the truth.