Further evidence that Scotland is no more the global drunk, can be found in:
‘The Role of Sex and Age on Pre-drinking: An Exploratory International Comparison of 27 Countries’ published in Alcohol and Alcoholism, 2019, 1–8 (link below).
With excellent eyesight or with a magnifying glass, you can see in the above graph that the percentage of survey respondents who pre-drink in Scotland is slightly lower than in England and notably lower than in Wales or, indeed, than in many of our European neighbours.
The authors explain just why pre-drinking is such a worry:
‘Pre-drinking (also known as pre-loading, pre-partying or pre-gaming) is most commonly defined as the consumption of alcohol in domestic settings prior to attending licensed premises (Foster and Ferguson, 2014). Often motivated by the higher cost of alcohol in licensed venues, many people also choose to pre-drink to achieve rapid intoxication, or to facilitate socializing with friends (Foster and Ferguson, 2014; Miller et al., 2016; O’Neil et al., 2016; Labhart and Kuntsche, 2017). The practice has become an issue of increasing global concern due to evidence linking pre-drinking with higher levels of alcohol use and intoxication (Hughes et al., 2008; Reed et al., 2011; Labhart et al., 2013), and increased risk of adverse alcohol-related consequences such as blackouts, assault, injury or arrest (Pedersen and LaBrie, 2007; Hughes et al., 2008; Paves et al., 2012; Labhart et al., 2013; Miller et al., 2016).
When the results are broken down by gender, you can see (below) that Scottish women seem to be no less likely to pre-drink than English women:
https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/advance-article/doi/10.1093/alcalc/agz040/5486344
Talking-up Scotland 