Alcohol 24 hour drinking

The introduction of 24-hour drinking laws may have trebled alcohol-related admissions to A&E departments in inner city areas at night, researchers say.
A study at London's St Thomas' Hospital compared overnight visits before and after the 2005 law change.

There were 80 alcohol-related visits in March 2005. This hit 250 in 2006, the Emergency Medicine Journal said.

Critics say data from one hospital cannot be applied to the whole of England and Wales.

However, the authors, who examined the emergency department at St Thomas' Hospital, said their study was representative of the problems in inner city areas across the country.

"If reproduced over longer time periods and across the UK as a whole, the additional numbers of patients presenting to emergency care could be very substantial," they said.

The figures, the authors suggest, "indicate that the legislation has had the opposite effect to that intended".