Binge Drinking in the United Kingdom - Why is it Worse Than in the USA?

Recent studies appearing in the British Medical Journal have shown a marked increase in binge drinking and alcohol abuse in the United Kingdom in the last 20 years. The US has its own binge drinking problems but in relation to the size of the population, the problem in the US is worse. Why?

I lived in England for the first 20 years of my life, and then lived in the USA for 20 years. I went to university in the US and noticed right from the beginning that the college binge drinking culture that's prevalent in American universities seems to end when students graduate. In the United Kingdom unfortunately, binge drinking seems to be a way of life for many people much later on in life, and from medical studies it looks like it's getting worse.

My father has said to me many times, if we had stayed in the UK I probably would be drinking a lot more alcohol. As it stands now, I drank my fair share when I was in college in the US, but haven't drunk more than a couple of alcoholic drinks a month since. Neither have most of my American friends. But the UK, on the other hand, unfortunately seems to be turning out a nation of alcoholics.

In Europe, people do consume a lot of alcohol. Much of it though is wine consumption with meals and, as it's drunk with meals, it is drunk pretty slowly. Most European countries therefore don't have the problem with binge drinking that the UK does. In the UK, people tend to drink for shorter periods of time but drink much more alcohol. Beer is a favorite and it gets guzzled down in rapid time. Also in the UK, getting drunk is often the object of going out for the evening. In the rest of Europe, people go out to have a drink. In the UK, they go out to specifically get drunk. Now that, I don't understand.