Our unhealthy view of drink is a pain for A&E

A friend of mine is known as Johnny A&E. He doesn’t drink much or very often, but once or twice a year when he gets properly hammered — he’s a birthdays and Christmas kind of drunk — he always ends up in A&E.

Either he has passed out in a doorway and been mistaken for dead, or does something cartoonish like walk into a lamp post and is subsequently staggering around bleeding from the head. Either way, concerned passers-by invariably call an ambulance. This has been going on for years, hence his name.

British nurses are calling for drunk people to not be allowed into A&E, but to be treated elsewhere – maybe in mobile field hospitals in city centres. Booze buses, drunk tanks — but not hospital. That being drunk does not constitute an accident. Is this reasonable? Would it work? The nurses say that what was previously a weekend problem — drunk people weaving around incoherently, amidst other A&E visitors, is now a constant thing. Is it fair to other A&E admissions to have to deal with pissed people falling around the place, being annoying?