Problems in the Drunk Tank

This BBC report is about a centre in London that deals with people who've drunk too much in an attempt to ease the burden on hospitals. It's not entirely clear whether the point is that since symptoms are similar there's an efficiency improvement or whether it's just accepted these days that if you somehow "brought your illness on yourself"* you deserve substandard treatment. Looking at the "beds" - thin mattresses on the floor in mixed sex overcrowded rooms, I'd guess the latter.

In the video a male medic says that the women are "leaving themselves vulnerable to sexual or physical attack" and that such attacks "needn't have happened". He fails to use the phrase "men should stop attacking women who are drunk" or the phrase "we take all reports of sexual assault seriously regardless of how much the woman has drunk". Then a female medic says "they say 'I've been spiked' and I say - no, it's the alcohol". Surely what she should say is "we'll perform a full set of tests and store the results in case they're needed in a criminal prosecution"?

This is on Newsbeat by the way - aimed at young people. Hey kids! If you drink too much alcohol and get raped, it's your fault and if you don't drink too much (or even any) alcohol and get spiked and raped, we'll assume you drank too much alcohol and blame you anyway.

Talk about irresponsible journalism. Oh and irresponsible behaviour on the part of medical professionals too... Ugh.

*Footnote: not withstanding that alcohol addiction is an illness so it's not actually reasonable to blame people for suffering from it.