Children & alcohol: Britain's latest scare story

"It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper" - Jerry Seinfeld's words, not mine. You can generally get an idea of whether anything important is happening by comparing the story on the front page; if everyone's leading with the same thing it's important. If everyone's got something different then there's nothing much going on.

On the latter type of day you'll find the Independent resorting to trying to scare people. The last memorable one was to do with the rising strength of cannabis, a story swiftly and effectively ridiculed by the excellent Ben Goldacre in his article Reefer Badness.

Today that same paper presents us with Children & alcohol: Britain's deadly cocktail. Please forgive my scepticism as yet another scare story is thrown at us, especially as this one looks rather similar to the last. Compare the first sentence of the cannabis story:

Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk

with the first sentence of the alcohol story:

Record numbers of children are in treatment for alcohol abuse

Both stories written by Jonathan 'template' Owen, incidentally. Now, I've looked for the statistics to see if there's been any more funny business but the paper seems to have an advance copy so I can't do that. Which is a shame - after the Indy's last foray into this sort if thing it'd be reassuring to know that they're not making it all up this time.

The main figures used show an increase in under-18s in alcohol treatment programmes from 2006 to 2007. The stated causes of this rise are predictable enough - celebrities, lack of understanding by children about long-term detrimental effects, higher incomes (for children?) and promotions making alcohol more affordable, increased accessibility and scarce alternatives to drinking. Speculation on other factors in this is not possible without the statistics to hand - availability of treatment programmes would be the obvious one. Actually the oldest figures quoted are from 2005 - we're not exactly given the chance to judge trends here.

As far as licensing goes, the bit that got my pedantic goat (let the image sit a while) is this:

Although still in its infancy, there are already 3,000 premises licensed for 24-hour drinking. Government thinking on 24-hour drinking is being reviewed amid fears that the promotion of cheap alcohol is leading to more alcohol abuse

The point they're trying to make is (I think) to do with increased accessibly of alcohol. Consider how many hotels there are in the country. Now how many of them must not have the usual residents' exemption if the figure is only 3,000? Some of those 3,000 premises are office buildings licensed 24 hours just in case the poor sods who have to work in them finish a big deal at 4am; others are (landside) airport lounges and other quirky little places like that. Once those places have been considered (not havens of underage binge-drinking, I hope we can agree) then how many of these evil 24-hour outlets are we left with? There are of course a few 24-hour shops about - often not dedicated off-licences, but convenience stores or supermarkets. I live in one of the biggest Licensing Authority areas in England & Wales and still I can count the number of them on one hand. One of them's actually my local shop and I've never seen anyone buy alcohol there (although I'm sure it's happened), let alone anyone underage.

Anyway, is this point about '24 hour drinking' (a term that cries out 'I'm a journalist who doesn't know what he/she is talking about) making alcohol more accessible to under-18s valid. Are kids more likely to buy alcohol after 11pm? Really? Is there a report that backs that up? And while we're at it, I'll be where does the seemingly automatic correlation between 24 hour alcohol licences and cheap alcohol come from?

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned the article's just the latest in a line of youth-demonising scare stories. It's alcohol this time, it was cannabis last time. Before that we had the terror of jumpers with hoods on - I'm actually wearing a hoodie right now but not (yet) considering mugging an old lady. Really, the law of diminishing marginal returns is at work here, no matter what the validity of the message.

Another problem I have is that it's Alcohol Concern's annual meeting on 7 November. They have a new report that apparently recommends setting up a regulatory watchdog for the drinks industry and "will call on the Government to set aside £1.6bn ... to tackle the (underage drinking) crisis". We know there's a crisis because we saw it in the paper.

So what's my angle on this? Well, I help people apply for alcohol licences. That isn't to say that I'm an advocate for absolute liberalisation of drinking laws. It's my job to tell clients what they can and can't do as far as their licence is concerned. My advice is always to stick rigidly to the letter of the law and obey the terms of your licence, and whatever you do don't sell to kids.

Some children are likely to have a problem with alcohol and they need help. Charities such as Rainer, the NSPCC, Alcohol Concern and others do excellent work in this area. However, this is yet another scare story from a discredited lineage and has a slight (I'm sure well-meaning) taint of money about it. I just don't like it.

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