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ALCOHOLISM AND CRUDE SPIRIT DRINKING
Exaggerated reports of the incidence, and social effects, of "meths drinkers" in parts of
the borough continue to circulate A deputation from the Council attended on Lord Stonham,
Minister of State, Home Office, supported by representatives of local tenants' associations,
to discuss the existing rehabilitation procedures and to explore possible programmes of action
designed to assist the individual and to help relieve this borough of its inequitable case
load of social misfits. Assurances were given that additional hostels proposing to cater for
crude spirit drinkers would not be officially encouraged in Tower Hamlets. The question of
the provision of places of refuge, or compulsory detention, as envisaged in the Inebriates
Acts of the last century seems to engender equivocal reactions in modern thinkers on penology.
It is understood that hostels, linked with prison after-care services, are planned for other
parts of the country.
Various steering committees, under the aegis of the Tower Hamlets Council of Social
Services, finally arranged the formation of a Council of Alcoholism for the borough. The
counselling and ancillary services of such a Council will meet a need particularly by giving
assistance to wives and other relatives of alcoholics. The borough council has been represented
at the preliminary meetings, and the inaugural public meeting recently convened,. No doubt
it will be considering its future relationship to the voluntary body when the latter is
actively at work. In addition to financial support however, the endeavour can only be truly
viable if it receives positive encouragement from the local community.
Finally, the borough services which have now settled down and provide an efficient and
worthy service to the inhabitants of the area may need to face further reorganisation in the
near future, in the light of the findings of various committees set up at national level. It
is hoped that this may be planned and phased to produce the least* trauma to the newly
developed borough departments
My thanks are extended to the Chairmen and Members of Committees for their support, and
to the Town Clerk and other Chief Officer colleagues of the Council for their help and
assistance through the year. To the staff of the Health Department I express my gratitude for
their willing and loyal service.
I am,
Yours faithfully,
R.W. WATTON.
Medical Officer of Health.
and Principal School Medical Officer
May, 1968,
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