Governments confront drunken violence.

"Every Friday and Saturday night our police fight an ongoing battle against booze-fuelled crime and disorder, and our accident and emergency centres handle the casualties," said British Home Secretary Theresa May on 28 July this year as she called for reform of the laws permitting 24-hour drinking in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The previous government had extended drinking hours in 2005 "without first dealing with the problems of binge drinking," she said. "Last year there were almost one million violent crimes that were alcohol-related and around half of all violent crime was considered alcohol-related by victims," she said. "Nearly 7 million attendances at hospital accident and emergency services are estimated to be alcohol-related, at a cost of around 650 million British pounds sterling ([pounds sterling]) per year to the taxpayer ... Overall, the total costs of alcohol-related crime and disorder to the taxpayer are estimated to be between 8 [pounds sterling] and 13 billion per year." May said the government would seek to ban shops from selling alcohol at below-cost price and would double the fine for under-age sales, among other measures that would give local authorities more control over pubs and clubs. Alcohol-related violence is a visible problem in many high-income countries like the United Kingdom, where it is measured. However, the problem is also found in many developing countries where liquor is often brewed illegally, sales are unregulated and violence statistics are not collected. Without proper surveillance it is impossible to know the true extent of the problem. Every year, the harmful use of alcohol is estimated to kill 2.5 million people, of whom 320 000 are young people aged between 15 and 29 years. Alcohol is implicated in one quarter of all homicides globally. Studies linking youth violence and harmful alcohol use have been conducted in several countries. In Australia, a report released by the government this year stated that young people aged 10-14 years who had engaged in binge drinking in the previous two weeks were five times more likely to have been violent than non-binge drinkers. Another study published in Substance Use & Misuse in 2010 compared the consequences of drinking among several European countries. In the Czech Republic, at least 15% of surveyed binge drinkers between the ages of 24 and 32 engaged in physical fights after alcohol consumption. A report released in 2001 showed that 80% of violent crime committed by young people in Estonia has been linked to alcohol abuse. And a study released by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) shows that, in Costa Rica, approximately 34% of drinkers between the ages of 18 and 29 engaged in fighting while drinking. Research from the United States of America in 2003 has shown that about 5000 young people under the age of 21 die from alcohol-related injuries each year. An estimated 1600 (32%) of these deaths are a result of homicide fuelled by alcohol. And in 2005, another American study showed that some 700 000 university students are assaulted each year by other students who have been heavily drinking. The definition of binge drinking and the size of a standard drink vary widely between and even within countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) currently defines "heavy episodic drinkers" as adults (aged [greater than or equal to] 15 years) who consume at least 60 grams or more of pure alcohol at least once a week. This corresponds approximately to six standard alcoholic drinks. The WHO-based Global Information System on Alcohol and Health is currently working on developing international standards for measuring the harmful use of alcohol. "Alcohol consumption varies immensely among countries, different population groups and over different periods of time depending on the political and social environment," says Dag Rekve, from the Department of Mental and Substance Abuse at WHO. …