Behavior or behaviour is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as well as the inanimate physical environment. It is the computed response of the system or organism to various stimuli or inputs, whether internal or external, conscious or subconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary.
Buckfast Tonic Wine is a caffeinated alcoholic drink consisting of fortified wine with added caffeine, originally made by monks at Buckfast Abbey in Devon, England. It is now made under a licence granted by the monastery, and distributed by J. Chandler & Company in Great Britain, James E McCabe Ltd in Northern Ireland, and Richmond Marketing Ltd in Ireland. It is based on a traditional recipe from France. The wine's distributor reported record sales of £43.2 million as of March 2017.
The legal drinking age is the minimum age at which a person can legally consume alcoholic beverages. The minimum age alcohol can be legally consumed can be different from the age when it can be purchased in some countries. These laws vary between countries and many laws have exemptions or special circumstances. Most laws apply only to drinking alcohol in public places with alcohol consumption in the home being mostly unregulated. Some countries also have different age limits for different types of alcohol drinks.
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 was passed by the United States Congress and was later signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on July 17, 1984. The act would punish any state that allowed persons under 21 years to purchase alcoholic beverages by reducing its annual federal highway apportionment by 10 percent. The law was later amended, lowering the penalty to 8 percent from fiscal year 2012 and beyond.
A price floor is a government- or group-imposed price control or limit on how low a price can be charged for a product, good, commodity, or service. It is one type of price support; other types include supply regulation and guarantee government purchase price. A price floor must be higher than the equilibrium price in order to be effective. The equilibrium price, commonly called the "market price", is the price where economic forces such as supply and demand are balanced and in the absence of external influences the (equilibrium) values of economic variables will not change, often described as the point at which quantity demanded and quantity supplied are equal. Governments use price floors to keep certain prices from going too low.
The alcohol licensing laws of the United Kingdom regulate the sale and consumption of alcohol, with separate legislation for England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland being passed, as necessary, by the UK Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the Scottish Parliament respectively.
Alcohol has a number of effects on health. Short-term effects of alcohol consumption include intoxication and dehydration. Long-term effects of alcohol include changes in the metabolism of the liver and brain, with increased risk ofseveral types of cancer and alcohol use disorder. Alcohol intoxication affects the brain, causing slurred speech, clumsiness, and delayed reflexes. There is an increased risk of developing an alcohol use disorder for teenagers while their brain is still developing. Adolescents who drink have a higher probability of injury including death.
The health of the Scottish population is, and has been for many years, worse than that of the English. Life expectancy is the lowest in the UK, at 77.1 for men and 81.1 for women, and one of the lowest in the OECD. The gap between Scotland and England has grown since 1980. Some of this is clearly attributable to economic disadvantage, but the differences in health status are more pronounced that would be expected on that basis. It has often been suggested that the Scottish diet is to blame. This is particularly so in Glasgow and the Glasgow effect has been the subject of some academic study.
An excise, or excise tax, is any duty on manufactured goods that is normally levied at the moment of manufacture for internal consumption rather than at sale. It is therefore a fee that must be paid in order to consume certain products. Excises are often associated with customs duties, which are levied on pre-existing goods when they cross a designated border in a specific direction; customs are levied on goods that become taxable items at the border, while excise is levied on goods that came into existence inland.
Binge drinking, or heavy episodic drinking, is drinking alcoholic beverages with an intention of becoming intoxicated by heavy consumption of alcohol over a short period of time, but definitions vary considerably.
Alcohol laws are laws relating to manufacture, use, being under the influence of and sale of alcohol or alcoholic beverages. Common alcoholic beverages include beer, wine, (hard) cider, and distilled spirits. Definition of alcoholic beverage varies internationally, e.g., the United States defines an alcoholic beverage as "any beverage in liquid form which contains not less than one-half of one percent of alcohol by volume". Alcohol laws can restrict those who can produce alcohol, those who can buy it, when one can buy it, labelling and advertising, the types of alcoholic beverage that can be sold, where one can consume it, what activities are prohibited while intoxicated, and where one can buy it. In some cases, laws have even prohibited the use and sale of alcohol entirely.
Social customs and laws concerning drinking alcohol in public vary significantly around the world. "Public" in this context refers to outdoor spaces such as roads, walkways, parks, or in a moving vehicle. Drinking in bars, restaurants, stadiums, and other such establishments, for example, is not generally considered to be "in public" even though those establishments are open to the general public.
Binge drinking is the practice of consuming excessive amounts of alcohol in a short period of time. Due to the idiosyncrasies of the human body, the exact amount of alcohol that would constitute binge drinking differs among individuals. The definitions of binge drinking are also nuanced across cultures and population subgroups. For example, many studies use gender-specific measures of binge drinking. The epidemiology of binge drinking likewise differs across cultures and population subgroups.
The legal drinking age varies from country to country. In the United States, the legal drinking age is currently 21. To curb excessive alcohol consumption by younger people, instead of raising the drinking age, other countries have raised the prices of alcohol beverages and encouraged the general public to drink less. Setting a legal drinking age of 21 is designed to discourage reckless alcohol consumption by youth, limiting consumption to those who are more mature, who can be expected to make reasonable and wise decisions when it comes to drinking.
The Alcohol (Scotland) Act 2012 is an Act of the Scottish Parliament, which introduces a statutory minimum price for alcohol, initially 50p per unit, as an element in the programme to counter alcohol problems.
Alcohol, sometimes referred to by the chemical name ethanol, is one of the most widely used and abused psychoactive drugs in the world. It is a central nervous system (CNS) depressant, decreasing electrical activity of neurons in the brain. The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies alcohol as a toxic, psychoactive, dependence-producing, and carcinogenic substance.
Dry January is a campaign delivered by Alcohol Change UK where people sign up to abstain from alcohol for the month of January. The term "Dry January" is a registered trademark with Alcohol Change UK and was first registered in 2014.
The Public Health (Alcohol) Act 2018 is an Act of the Oireachtas.
Alcohol in the United Kingdom is legal to buy, sell and consume. Consumption rates within the country are high among the average of OECD nations however average among European countries but consistently ranks highest on binge drinking culture. An estimated 29 million people in the United Kingdom drank alcohol in 2017.
This page is a list of terms related to the psychoactive drug alcohol.
