Cheap drink available to youngsters

Cut-Price alcohol and high pocket money mean “there has never been a better time” for teenagers to buy lots of cheap drink, a national charity has said.

The warning comes in a week when politicians and medical professionals have expressed concern at the “binge drinking culture” in the South Wales Valleys.

Alcohol Concern said the price of alcohol has barely risen in 10 years, while children’s weekly allowances have increased 600 per cent since 1987.

The charity has called for increased taxes on alcohol to deter young drinkers.

But drinks industry body the Portman Group said education was a better way to prevent under-18s abusing alcohol.

Alcohol Concern said it had collected price information from random branches of supermarkets that had previously failed the Home Office’s spot-checks for selling alcohol to under-18s.

A teenager could easily buy three times the daily recommended alcohol limit for an adult male, it warned.

An Alcohol Concern spokesman said: “With the average weekly allowance for a child aged between 12 and 16 being £9.53, a teenager could spend £7.29 at a corner shop and buy one bottle of alcohol containing 13.12 units of alcohol – or 3.28 times a man’s recommended daily limit.”

Don Shenker, Alcohol Concern’s director of policy and services, said: “Young people quite often drink to get drunk.

“When they manage to purchase alcohol, the aim is generally to drink it over the course of one evening,” he said.

“Cheap alcohol promotions help explain just why those young people who drink can afford to do so at far greater levels than in the past.

“Until this Government gets serious about making alcohol less affordable, it is hard to see how we can prevent young people from drinking cheap alcohol.”

David Poley, chief executive of the Portman Group – the drinks industry’s social responsibility body – claimed better education, not higher prices, was the best method of deterring underage drinking.

“It seems peculiar to be considering taxing adult drinkers to stop children breaking the law,” he said.

“There is a serious problem with underage drinking in the UK, but it is important to acknowledge some positive trends,” he said.

Cynon Valley Leader