How low prices keep booze flowing for teens

It is what the average Scottish child gets for pocket money every week. But £10 can buy enough alcohol in city stores to leave a group of four or five teenagers in a drunken stupor.

Aggressive discounting on booze by supermarkets has raised growing concerns about the toll on the nation's health and the habits of teenagers in particular.

Now an Evening News investigation has discovered the startling array of super-strength ciders, high-alcohol beers, and cheap wine and spirits you can buy for under a tenner.

Our survey at five city supermarkets discovered offers such as a litre of 7.5 per cent cider for just £1.99, 20-bottle packs of Stella Artois for £7.49 and a "three bottles of wine for a tenner" promotion.

The extent of the special offers we discovered disturbed GPs who said the "crazy prices" would fuel binge-drinking among teenagers.

They said drinking among youngsters was one of the main reasons for huge increases in pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers in the Lothians.

Campaigners today called for separate booze aisles and tills in supermarkets and restrictions on advertising as part of tougher controls over the sale of alcohol.

Industry leaders said they had set up a special task force to look at measures which would help tackle Scotland's binge-drinking culture.

That could lead to a voluntary code of conduct that may place limits on special offers for drinks.

Dr Dean Marshall, a GP based in Dalkeith, Midlothian and chairman of the Scottish General Practitioners Committee (SGPC), said our findings highlighted one of the biggest issues in the debate over alcohol abuse.

He said: "That is pretty scary prices for such powerful alcohol.

"Those sort of prices are likely to encourage binge-drinking, particularly among young people who don't have much money.

"The thing that worries me the most is that young people may not be fully aware of the differences in strengths of the alcohol and that can lead to all sorts of other problems."

The number of teenage girls in Edinburgh falling pregnant has risen by 56 per cent in the last decade.

A total of 61 girls aged between 13 and 15 fell pregnant last year compared to 39 in 1994.

Dr Ian McKee, an Edinburgh-based GP, said that many of these pregnancies can be linked to alcohol abuse.

He said: "In my experience the short-term damage of teenage drinking often presents itself in other ways than just damaging your liver.

"The huge leap in chlamydia and teenage pregnancy is normally down to people losing their inhibitions when drunk."

Hundreds of litres of alcohol were seized from children as young as 11 during a summer crackdown on underage drinking by police earlier this week.

Officers carried out dozens of swoops on drinking dens in the south of the city, including the Meadows, and caught groups of up to 30 youngsters downing bottles of booze.

Some drunk youths were rushed to hospital by officers for medical treatment while others were taken home to their parents.

Police were forced to deal with as many as 20 calls a night on Fridays and Saturdays from members of the public concerned over teen drinkers.

Tom Wood, chairman of Action on Alcohol and Drugs in Edinburgh, called for restrictions on alcohol advertising and more restraints on in-store promotions for drink.

He said: "It just confirms that the price of alcohol is such that it is within the reach of most people now. If you look around the world the two things that are used to control alcohol abuse is price and availability.

"You can control the supply but then you also have to control the demand side of things. The new licensing laws will bring in greater restrictions on promotions but I would like to see more focus on alcohol off-sales.

"Young people are not getting their booze from pubs but from shops and supermarkets."

A number of key industry trade associations, representing everyone from the breweries to supermarkets, are working on a new set of guidelines to tackle Scotland's binge-drinking problem.

The steering group wants to make it tougher in Scotland than anywhere else in the UK for children to buy drink and is understood to be focusing its attentions on improving training for staff selling alcohol and making health warnings on products and in shops clearer.

Fiona Moriarty, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, said: "This is the responsibility of everyone in the trade from the manufacturers to all retailers. But it would be silly to go for knee-jerk reactions, such as clamping down on supermarket sales, because this won't make the problem go away.

"The majority of people do enjoy alcohol in a sensible way but we need to tackle the binge and underage drinking issues."

Paul Waterson, chief executive of the Scottish Licensed Trade Association, said: "Much of the focus on Scotland's binge-drinking problem has been on pubs but the majority of sales come through supermarkets.

"If we are going to do something about the fact that people, particularly youngsters, are not using alcohol responsibly then the supermarkets have to play their part.

"The prices are just silly in the supermarkets and alcohol is treated like any other product like a tin of beans but what we need to do is mark it off - put it in separate isles and checkout queues to make it known that it is not like other products."

Alistair Mackinnon, chief executive of Fast Forward, a voluntary organisation that educates hundreds of the city's teenagers each year on the dangers of alcohol, maintains that prevention is better than cure when it comes to solving the teenage drinking problem He said: "Education is vital - cracking down on the places youngsters can buy drink itself is not going to solve the problem alone.

"A lot of teenagers do get mixed messages when it comes to drinking because they see binge-drinking among adults, particularly in the home environment, and it does have an effect on them. There is definitely an increase in the awareness of the dangers of drinking and it is the biggest substance misuse issue in Edinburgh, particularly because it is legal."

Edinburgh News