Series of alcohol-related deaths sparks call for holiday restraint
Doctors are warning people to moderate their drinking over the Lunar New Year holidays after a number of recent alcohol-related deaths.
In Shaoyang county, Hunan, a man died of alcohol poisoning after drinking with colleagues following an annual end-of-year banquet.
Newspaper reports said the man's family had asked that his death be treated as a work-related accident as they said he had had no choice but to keep up with his colleagues in drinking large quantities of rice wine.
A week earlier, a 17-year-old Tibetan girl died of alcohol-related poisoning in the province after taking part in a drinking competition with a friend.
There are about 39 million alcoholics in the country, which works out at about 3 per cent of the population. Although the figure is much higher in many western countries - including the United States, where it is thought to be one in 13 - experts say alcoholism is on the increase.
Sheng Lixia, director of the Alcohol and Drug Dependence Department at Beijing Anding Hospital, said the problem was growing.
'The number of patients we received this year was definitely two or three times that of one or two years ago,' she said. 'Alcoholic help groups have also seen more young newcomers, with the youngest in hospital being 19 years old. About 20 per cent of our patients are younger than 35.'
She said that before 2000, hospitals rarely saw patients as young as this. Women were now also being treated for alcoholism and it was not only men who were suffering.
Young people can easily buy distilled spirits because there is no national minimum-age requirement for buying alcohol.
Dr Sheng attributes the rise in the number of alcoholics to the nation's economic development in conjunction with convenient access to alcohol and the place it holds in Chinese traditions
'China has a long history of alcohol - it is a face issue. As commercialisation sweeps through China, there are more business meetings and more drink-fuelled occasions. China [does not have] a social drinking culture. People drink to impress and to excess.'
A 26-year-old Beijing resident, Li Xiaolong, said: 'It's very necessary to drink ... it's a Chinese tradition.'
But the extent of the alcoholism problem is still largely unrecognised. Three years after Alcoholics Anonymous was established on the mainland, only about 50 people have sought help.
