Shocking images used in new alcohol abuse campaign

Popular drinking phrases have been given a sinister interpretation in a new hard hitting campaign to target alcohol abuse.

East Lancashire Primary Care Trust (PCT) has launched a series of posters bearing images of obese, injured, pregnant and dead people accompanied by phrases including 'make mine a large one', 'down in one', 'beer belly' and 'what's your poison?'.

The posters form part of the Trust's Know When To Say When campaign which aims to save a million years of life by 2011.

Fifty per cent of all street crime, 30 per cent of all accidents and 50 per cent of all teenage pregnancies in the region are drink related, according to the Trust. It also reports that 1,000 people die in the north west every year after excessive drinking.

The Trust worked with the community to put the campaign together, including Tony Aspinall, licensee of the Wheatsheaf in Burnley.

He said: "The campaign is a good idea. It might help stop the lawlessness on the streets and I've seen too many examples of this over the last two years."

Kathy Reade, chair of the PCT said: "Our campaign is intentionally hard-hitting because we want to bring it home to people that alcohol abuse wrecks lives. The solution is often in their own hands."

Advertising in the press, on radio, at football grounds, on buses, taxis and billboards will take place during April and September.

Leaflets will also be put through letter boxes and a portable pub, The Watering Hole, will be in town centres on various evenings to hand out bottles of water.