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Drunk man ‘too drunk’ for drunk tank

Police at Gardermoen airport in Oslo opted against detaining a man on Sunday evening because he was 'too drunk for his own well being' and instead took him straight to hospital.

Published: 30 July 2012 16:26 CEST

Drunk man 'too drunk' for drunk tank

Photo: Stitch/Flickr

A police unit at the airport stumbled across the man inside the terminal building late Sunday evening.

The man was clearly the worse for wear for the drink but because of his advanced state of inebriation it was decided that a sobering up cell was not suitable accomodation. The police unit therefore took him straight to the hospital.

"According to the unit he had a blood alcohol content of over 3.0 promille," said Randi Nymoen at Gardermoen police to the Romerikes Blad newspaper.

According to Nymoen the man did not require his stomach to be pumped clean, but his drunken state "was at a level of inebriation which meant that he couldn't take care of his own health", the newspaper reported.

A drunk tank is a jail cell used for the purpose of allowing intoxicated people to sleep off their endeavours. They are used on both a compulsory and voluntary basis, whether legally arrested, charged, or otherwise.

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Spain has second highest rate of daily alcohol drinkers in EU

Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP

Thirteen percent of people in Spain drink alcohol every day, a similar rate to Italy, where 12 percent enjoy a tipple on a daily basis, and only behind Portugal, where 20 percent of people have an alcoholic drink seven days a week.

That puts Spaniards above the EU average of 8.4 percent daily drinkers, data published by Eurostat in July 2021 reveals.

This consistent alcoholic intake among Spaniards is far higher than in countries such as Sweden (1.8 percent daily drinkers), Poland (1.6 percent), Norway (1.4 percent), Estonia (1.3 percent) and Latvia (1.2 percent).

However, the survey that looked at the frequency of alcohol consumption in people aged 15 and over shows that weekly and monthly drinking habits among Spaniards are more in line with European averages.

A total of 22.9 percent of respondents from Spain said they drunk booze on a weekly basis, 18.3 percent every month, 12.5 percent less than once a month, and 33 percent haven’t had a drink ever or in the last year.

Furthermore, another part of the study which looked at heavy episodic drinking found that Spaniards are the third least likely to get blind drunk, after Cypriots and Italians.

The Europeans who ingested more than 60 grammes of pure ethanol on a single occasion at least once a month in 2019 were Danes (37.8 percent), Romanians (35 percent), Luxembourgers (34.3 percent) and Germans (30.4 percent).

The UK did not form part of the study but Ireland is included.

Overall, Eurostat’s findings reflect how the Spanish habit of enjoying a glass of wine with a meal or a small beer (caña) outdoors with friends continues to be common daily practice, even though 13 percent does not make it prevalent.

Spaniards’ tendency to drink in moderation also continues to prevail, even though a 2016 study by Danish pharmaceuticals company Lundbeck found that one in six people in the country still drinks too much.

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