Do Brits Need More Drinking Time?

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Not everyone is ready to drink to the new plan. "The chance that fiddling around with drinking hours is going to make British people into Italians," says Andrew McNeill, director of the protemperance Institute of Alcohol Studies, "is about as likely as my becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury." Allison says vacationing Brits' penchant for getting soused in countries that permit 24-hour tippling should stand as a warning. The law's effects will be limited anyway. In Croydon, although more than 200 bars have applied to stay open later, most want only an hour or two more--which would do little to discourage bingeing and would merely push after-hours carousing later into the night.

Alcohol experts think the government could be a lot more influential if it had the guts to take on the liquor industry and voters who whinge about the nanny state. Those experts say there's good evidence that what works best to curb excess drinking is higher taxes on alcohol, lowering the number and density of places to buy booze and instituting a robust policy of random breath-alcohol testing for drivers. But across Europe--the hardest-drinking region in the world--almost all governments, including Britain's, prefer responsible-drinking campaigns premised on the idea that trouble flows from a small minority rather than from a whole culture tolerant of excess. Which means that Natalie, strapping up her silver sandals in the ladies' room at the Black Sheep Bar in Croydon, won't change her habits anytime soon. Binge drinking "is just what we do," she says. "We don't need to get drunk. We just do it because we can."