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Summary:Children who overdose on alcohol. The number of young children arriving in hospital accident and emergency departments around the country is on the increase. These are children who have overdosed on alcohol. The majority will have drunk to excess for the first time, but a significant minority are regulars.
The pattern changes when children reach the age of sixteen, where, increasingly, the faces are startlingly familiar, and the hardened drinker arriving through the door every Saturday night is now much more likely to be a teenager than someone in their forties or fifties.
In one major hospital, around half of the department's patients arriving before 11pm have alcohol related problems. After 11pm that rises to over 90%. These can range to drink driving incidents to street and domestic assaults. Consultants throughout the country confirm that alcohol abuse amongst children is dramatically increasing.