Dear licenced venues,

I have a bone to pick with you.

If you’re serving free drinks – to ladies or anyone, you should provide water, or at least the mixers free too.

It’s not too much to ask, as you distribute free alcoholic drinks en mass, that you also make water and/or soft drinks available too.

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It’s irresponsible to be serving unlimited amounts of booze, with no availability of water.

I know what some responses will be:

“It’s free, why are you complaining?”

I’m not complaining for myself – I am not a big ladies’ night-goer. I’m complaining because that girl who necked four free drinks in a row won’t pay for a water and is now passed out in the bathroom. Or that other girl throwing up.

Drunk people are stupid, and will keep on drinking. Making water openly available will at least offset a little of this mental behaviour.

I went to a ladies night where they were serving mixed alcoholic drinks for free

So I asked for the vodka soda – hold the vodka.

“No ma’am, we can’t do that,” I was told. I can have a free vodka-soda, but if I want a soda, I have to pay an insane AED24 for the privilege.

Tell me that’s not ridiculous.

I come from Australia, where the responsible service of alcohol is closely monitored – sometimes maybe too much – but there are certain rules

The responsible service of alcohol requires all bartenders and those serving alcohol take a test to ensure they know when to cut people off.

It’s also law to provide water, free of charge to any patron in a venue that serves alcohol.

In this instance, I’m not saying water should be free everywhere (if it’s bottled anyway), but there should be some obligation to vendors to provide non-alcoholic beverages in the same amounts as alcoholic.

It’s venues’ responsibility, just as much as patrons, if you’re going to ply people with free alcohol, to make sure it’s safe.