Message in a bottle over children and alcohol

I'm not easily shocked. But I was the other day. A friend of Jack's came round to play and told us how he had spent Saturday night drinking lager with his parents. This friend is eight. He's a nice boy, and his parents love him. But lager? At eight?

Now, don't get me wrong. I like a drink. And Jack is no sheltered flower.

His latest ambition is to run a pub when he's older. But I would never allow him to just casually drink lager on a Saturday night. For a start, we've usually got football on a Sunday morning. It's enough of a battle to get him to go to bed at a reasonable time, without alcohol being involved. Imagine the state he might be in with a hangover.

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And that's not to mention the damage to internal organs, the effect on growth and development and the emotional and psychological problems that exposure to alcohol can cause in children. I am really struggling to find any justification for it whatsoever. Do these parents do it for fun, and find it amusing to see their children tipsy?

There is, of course, the argument that introducing children gradually to alcohol helps them to handle it when they get older. But this usually rests on the pretext of watered-down red wine at dinner, not tins of Special Brew on a Saturday night. I'd like to see any research which traces whether this policy is successful in preventing alcohol abuse later in life. But personally, I've never seen the sense in it. Children are not daft. They know that a sip of wine and water will never have the full-on mind-blowing effect of a bellyful of vodka and coke.

But the Department of Health has done some research, and has found that one in five under-15s drinks more than 600 units of alcohol in a year.

For a girl in this category, this means, on average, 97 cans of beer or lager, seven bottles of spirits, 12 bottles of wine, half a bottle of fortified wine, five shandies and 104 bottles of alco-pops. Even I would be struggling if I had consumed that lot in 12 months.

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Two questions come to mind straight away. Why do they do it, and where do they get it from? Teenagers drink for most of the same reasons that adults do. To fit in with their friends, to escape from the boring reality of their lives, and for the pure hedonistic pleasure that it gives them. And they also do it because it is a rite of passage. It proves that they are moving into the adult world.

I can still remember my first half of lager in a pub when I was 14. And I can remember the excitement of trying to buy drink on a school camping trip when I was 16. We didn't have much luck. It was a Sunday evening in Wales, the off licence was shut and the pub landlord took one look at us and bolted the door. My mother, obviously, didn't know any of this until years later.

And she would have taken a very dim view indeed. She certainly wouldn't have cosied down with me on a Saturday night and cracked open a few cans.

These days, at 15 or under, teenagers are going to be struggling to get into the pub to buy alcohol. Police forces have seriously cracked down on under-age drinking, and any landlord who values his licence is not going to sacrifice his reputation for the sake of his takings.

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And shopkeepers and supermarkets, in general, operate a tough under-age ID scheme. I support all attempts to make this legislation as draconian as it needs to be. I might have had my own wild teenage moments, but I don't relish the prospect of finding either of my two children drunk in the park on cider. So if one in five of teenagers is drinking the amount the Department of Health says they are, it must be coming from somewhere other than pubs and shops.

And I'm afraid that the only conclusion is that they are getting it from home. This is a big problem in my own town, Barnsley, where the Children's Services Scrutiny Commission recently found that 67 per cent of youngsters get their alcohol from adults. Whether it is older brothers and sisters they have coerced into buying it for them, or mothers and fathers themselves supplying it, surely the responsibility lies with the parents?

I'm not being idealistic. I know, from personal experience, that

every child will find a way to rebel. Some do it through clothes and

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music, some through drugs, and some choose alcohol. You never know how your own children are going to turn out and what you might have to tackle in the future, so I don't want to preach. But to condone and encourage drinking alcohol in young children is beyond me. It's not big, it's not clever, and when the consequences include liver disease, heart attacks and brain damage, it is certainly not funny at all.