Assignment 3:
Cecile A Marczinski, Estee C. Grant, Binge Drinking in Adolescents and College Students, April 2009, Nova Science

This book is a successful source in drawing the distinction between social drinking and binge- drinking. It highlights the realities of drinking in exess and informs us of the dangers of teenage drinking as it can be more damaging to the brain.
The book provides us with hard facts and statistics so is therefore very informative. It is also a recent book, published in 2009, suggesting all the information should be up to date. The source seems to base itself in America, this may be irrelevent in that the medical information e.g the consequences binge drinking has on our brain and our body would be the same, however, to be helping the problem of binge drinking in Britain it may be more effective to use examples closer to home. Quoting British doctos etc so we can gage an aqurate estimation of the severity of the problem in Britain.



www.oxfordreference.com. concise medical dictionary.

Fetak alcohol syndrome: " A condition of newborn babies that results from the toxic effects on the fetus of maternal alcohol abuse. Babies have a low birth weight and growth is retarded; there may be head and facial abnormalities and possibly mental retardation. The greater the alcohol abuse, the more severe the fetal manifestations. "

Although this is not the most substantial source being a dictionary definition, I found it one of the most successful at familiarising me with the problems surrounding alcohol abuse. Despite being simply a definition, it informs us of the facts as they are, and reminds us that by abusing alcohol we could potentially damage the life of another. Although this source mainly addresses women, I feel that informing us that alcohol has the potential to disfigure aunborn child, it obviously isn't doing us any good. The main downfall to this source is the length but otherwise i found it very informative.



Mark Sweeny, Guardian Newspaper, Sep 2009

This article discribles the coalition of 45 companies in order to campaign against binge drinking. It describes the action needed to be take to begin to control the problem. It talks about the British drinking culture in a way that doesn't just describe the issue and deaths caused, but shows that companies are working together and taking the initiative to do something about it by bringing light of the subject to the public eye through imagery and slogans. Althouh this article is usefull in providing us with various solutions to the drinking problem in Britain, it doesn not show us any examples which makes it more difficult to envisage how successful their campaign will turn out.



Mark Sweeney, Brown: Drink Industry Must Learn Lessons, Guardian.co.uk, Wed 21 Nov 2007


This article mainly discusses Gordan Browns motives for reducing binge drinking in the U.K. It describes it as a "cultu issue" which exemplifies the emornity of the problem. The article shows the ways in which Brown questions the alcohol industry and gives us examples on ways in which we could begin to control the situation e.g. no alcohol advertisments on the television before 9pm. The article mainly talks about a meeting which was held "examining the role of marketing in underage alcohol consumption", which is uful in informing us who surrounds the problem and reassures us that steps are being taken against it. However the source is mainly an account of what happened at the meeting and who attended, it does not present us with many facts relating to the topic nor do we get a full insight into the steps planned to be taken. Another problem with the article is that it is from 2007, meaning it is not up to date.