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ALCOHOL

Walpurgis Night revelries run the usual gamut

Most parts of Sweden experienced a typical Walpurgis Night (Valborgsmässafton) on Wednesday. The Swedes´annual celebration of spring is customarily filled with drunken and disorderly behavior, fights, underage binge drinking and various arrests.

Walpurgis Night revelries run the usual gamut

But not in the exemplary municipality of Kronoberg where the youngest person picked up in a state of inebriation was almost 20 years old.

The Kronoberg model has been such a success that the police have been lecturing other local councils on how to manage potential problems during traditional festivities. The Kronoberg method includes a tough stance towards underage drinking and co-operation with parents.

Elsewhere in Sweden, drunken disorderliness was the order of the night. Stockholm police had a record number of calls to deal with, which included taking a 13-year-old suffering from alcohol poisoning to the Maria Ungdom hospital in Stockholm.

The hospital was more than packed with young drinkers suffering the ill effects of too much alcohol.