Starting them young

A report by the World Health Organisation has claimed that Britain has the worst rate of child alcohol consumption in the world.

Great Britain has the worst rate of child alcohol abuse worldwide, and more than half of children in England, Scotland and Wales have drunk alcohol by the age of 13, according to a report.

The study, one of the largest of its kind by the World Health Organization (WHO), looked at 2021-22 data on 280,000 children aged 11, 13 and 15 from 44 countries and regions who were asked about alcohol, cigarettes and vape usage.

The analysis found that Great Britain had a significant issue with underage alcohol abuse. More than a third of boys (35%) and girls (34%) had drunk alcohol by the age of 11, and by 13, 57% of girls and 50% of boys in England had consumed alcohol – the highest rate included in the analysis.

More than half of girls (55%) and boys (56%) in England from higher-income families said they had drunk alcohol in their lifetime, compared with 50% of girls and 39% of boys from lower-income backgrounds.

However, they are conflating two very different things here. If a child has consumed alcohol in the home on a handful of occasions, it does not necessarily mean that they are drinking in an abusive or problematic manner. There is no law against adults giving alcohol to children over the age of five, and many parents may feel that, once they enter their teens, that allowing them the occasional small drink in a controlled environment is better than imposing a strict prohibition that they may well kick against. If parents are regularly drinking alcohol themselves, it comes across as hypocritical to deny their fifteen-year-olds, who may well be physically bigger than them, a small glass from time to time.

It used to be a commonplace observation that children in countries like France and Italy would be routinely given wine at family meals from an early age to accustom them to the culture. This was once regarded with slightly raised eyebrows in this country, but as cultures have grown together and drinking at home has become normal, the situation here has become much the same.

When I was a young child, the attitude was very much one of “we never have drink in the house except for Christmas”, with the exception of my dad having the occasional bottle of brown ale. But, in the 1970s, there was a cultural shift, and home drinking was seen as more normal and indeed aspirational. I remember been allowed the odd glass of bottled cider from my mid-teens, which was probably perceived as something virtually non-alcoholic at a time when strengths were never declared, and by the age of 16 I was regularly having half-pint cans of lager.

I did a couple of polls on Twitter which generally bore this out, that most people had first sampled alcoholic between the ages of 13 and 15, and most had been introduced to it in the family home.

POLL: At what age did you first have an alcoholic drink (excluding shandy)?

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) April 26, 2024

POLL: In what circumstances did you have your first alcoholic drink? (excluding "try a sip of this beer/wine")
A. On licensed premises, legally
B. On licensed premises, underage
C. From parents or relatives at home
D. From friends or older adults

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) April 27, 2024

Of course, there is another side to the picture, in that many under-18s are drinking alcohol in an uncontrolled and potentially hazardous manner, in parks, at parties and at informal gatherings. But merely having been given a glass of beer or wine by your parents does not automatically lead on to this, as bodies like the hard-line prohibitionist Institute of Alcohol Studies, quoted in the article, allege.

We now have the tightest ever controls on underage purchasing of alcohol and, while there may be the odd dodgy backstreet shopkeeper, under-18s find it very difficult to obtain drink on their own account. So they are either getting it from older peers, unrelated adults, a black market, or parents and relatives. Some parents are not particularly bothered about their children drinking a lot once they’re 16 or 17 and see no problem with it.

This will inevitably be used as ammunition for further restrictions on the availability of alcohol and increases in the price for adult drinkers. But it is essentially caused by a decline in social cohesion and a sense of moral values, and tightening the screw even more is unlikely to do much to curb it. No doubt someone will pipe up with the bright idea, thought, that since we are increasing the legal age for buying tobacco products by one year every year, why shouldn’t we do the same with alcohol for the protection of the young?

Much tighter restrictions on underage drinking on licensed premises have perversely had a negative social effect. When I was growing up in the 1970s, it was considered entirely normal for young people to be drinking in pubs from the age of 15 or 16 onwards, and it provided a convenient social outlet for them. This helped to socialise young people into drinking in a restrained and moderate way under the watchful eye of the licensee and older customers. They knew they were only there on sufferance and had to behave themselves.

However, pubs today are required to take a very strict line on checking the age of young drinkers, and aggressive ID’ing often continues well after 18 under the aegis of schemes such as “Challenge 25”. Many evening venues will refuse to admit any under-18s due to concerns about drinks being shared within groups. This is something that has only really happened in the present century. But the result is not that young people abstain from alcohol, but that they drink it in less controlled environments such as park benches or each other’s homes. And this has had a detrimental effect both on the licensed trade and on wider society.