Buying time on binge drinking

Councillors in the Breton city of Rennes have embarked on a radical policy of purchasing bars in the troubled area and replacing them with shops

THE historic city of Rennes in Brittany in western France has come up with a radical way of beating an epidemic of binge drinking among young people – by buying up the town's bars and transforming them into shops or restaurants.

Rennes, a cathedral city with two popular universities, has a large population of young people and in recent years has seen a serious increase in binge drinking.

One area in particular has become the focus of the night-time partying – the Rue Saint Michel, a narrow cobbled street in the medieval heart of the city that is now endowed with so many bars in its listing, half-timbered buildings that locals have dubbed it the Rue de la Soif, or "Thirsty Street".

While young people flock there in their hundreds to drink and party late into the night, residents are becoming increasingly fed up with the noise and drunken, boorish behaviour.

On occasion, attempts to arrest drunk and disorderly revellers have turned into running battles with police.

Rennes city council has responded to the problem by adopting the unusual policy of buying up the street's bars so it can close them down.

So far it has acquired two popular watering holes, one of which has since been converted into a restaurant and the other into an upmarket video and DVD shop specialising in art-house films.

"We wanted to reduce the concentration of bars in the city centre as part of a general policy to reduce excessive drinking in Rennes," said Honoré Puil, the city councillor charged with tackling binge drinking.

"It is still very much an active policy and we plan to continue with it," he said.

Councillors want to reduce the annoyance to residents, but are also concerned by the increase in heavy drinking among young people.

Rennes is the capital of the Brittany region, which is a heavily rural area where alcoholism has long been endemic among the adult population. In 2006, more than 6,500 people were arrested for public drunkenness, the highest number in any French region that year.

Despite the scale of the problem, not everyone in Rennes is convinced that shutting bars will cut down drinking.

"The problem doesn't come from the bars, it's the people walking in the street with their bottles," said David Guern, who runs the Sympatic Bar in Rue Saint Michel.

He sees the real problem as young people buying alcoholic drinks in supermarkets and consuming them on the street, not customers of establishments like his.

"If people are in bars we can keep an eye on what they are drinking, we know how to control our establishments. The authorities should stop blaming us for all the problems," he complained.

Even some who have benefited from the city council's plan are not convinced.

"It's certainly better to have a mixture of shops in this street. But is closing down two bars really going to change anything?" said Christian Le Marchand, who runs the new video and DVD store that replaced one of the former bars.

Mr Puil agrees that there is no magical solution to cutting down binge drinking which is why the city authorities are trying to tackle the problem on several fronts.

Last year, the city launched an eye-catching poster campaign on the dangers of excessive drinking. One poster showed a car crashed into a tree with the slogan, "Alcohol brings you closer to nature." Another saying "Alcohol helps you meet wonderful people" showed paramedics looking at a crash victim.

Later this year, city authorities will set up a network of "moderators" trained to defuse potentially unpleasant situations linked to public drunkenness, Mr Puil said.

The city councillor said his services were also working with schools and colleges to educate young people about the dangers of binge drinking. They also support groups that organise alcohol-free evening activities, such as monthly roller skate tours around the town.

The recent ban on cigarette smoking in French cafés, restaurants and nightclubs has also provided an unexpected source of inspiration on how to tackle the problem from a psychological perspective.

"Today cigarettes have a bit of an out-dated, old-fashioned image," Mr Puil said. "Perhaps we need to try to do the same thing with alcohol."

WORRYING EXCEPTION TO RULE
YOUNG people in France do not tend to go in for binge-drinking in the same way as their British counterparts.

The reason often cited for this is a culture that is more at ease with alcohol, where children are introduced to wine at a reasonably early age.

Brittany, however, is a worrying exception. Recent statistics from the French monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction show that more and more young people in Brittany are also consuming alcohol in dangerous quantities.

In 2005, nearly half – 48 per cent – of all 17-year-olds in Brittany had been seriously drunk at least three times in a year.

That compared with a French national average for the same age group of only 26 per cent.