Cours d'immunologie

Introduction by presenter

Now we tend to think that binge drinking as a very home-grown phenomenon, a loutish scene on high-streets every week end as a peculiarly British problem.  But just across the Channel in France too, they seem to have adopted our ways and indeed our language, for they also have “le binge drinker”.  And in Rennes the capital of Brittany, the city council has come up with a novel way of dealing with them.

Reporter

Well, they’ve had a problem with drinking amongst young people going back several years. There’s a high concentration of young people in the city, there are nearly 60,000 students, many of them in their late teens and away from home for the first time and for quite a while it has become the norm for them to congregate in the old city centre, especially on Thursday nights before they all go home for the weekend. The main street there is called rue St Michel and that’s where all the bars are, it’s been nicknamed rue de la Soif or Thirsty street and basically people gather in the bars and also outside where they mix their own cocktails of anything from whisky and orange to rum and coke or things that are even stronger and they make a lot of noise playing drums on the bins. It got so bad that a couple of years ago there were clashes with riot police. It has calmed down since then but there is still a problem. There have been a number of deaths, in fact, linked to alcohol, there was a fire at a party last autumn and three people were killed, another two died at a festival in December.

Presenter

So what actually has the council done?

Reporter

The council has introduced some by-laws to limit drinking in the streets at certain times to avoid this problem. It’s introduced more police patrols. It’s staggered the closing times of bars so that they can stay open later than before in some cases. But it’s also taken this particular step of intervening to stop the area becoming overtaken with bars and clubs. Now what happens is that when a business goes on sale, the council tries to pre-empt it by buying it up and setting up another activity. So for instance, one bar closed recently and the council bought it and leased it out to a business selling dvds, another bar has since become a restaurant. But the council can’t interfere in advance, it has to wait for these places to go on sale.

Presenter

So is there any evidence that the council’s action in Rennes is working. Won’t the problem and indeed the problem drinkers, won’t they just go elsewhere?

Reporter

Well, I spoke to the council about this and they say that the appeal is very much that the excitement for people is that they do come to the city centre and all gather there. But they are taking other steps too. They’ve organised other night-time activities regularly on Thursday nights, with a different theme each week, from sport, to music, to art and alcohol is banned and they say this has attracted a number of people, including those who would otherwise have been drinking. So they are making headway, but the problem is not solved.

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