Binge drinking fuels row over civil liberties

Published on Saturday 6 September 2008 01:33

TONIGHT, thousands of young men and women in Scotland will gather at a friend's flat to let their hair down.

Some will cut rock star poses while playing Guitar Hero on the PlayStation. Others will dance themselves silly to the White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand or even Abba.

More still will bring round a curry and a DVD, or simply gather on the sofa to watch the international football highlights.

The common factor that will link the vast majority of these little gatherings, from Lerwick to Dumfries? Alcohol.

A trip to the "offie" en route to party venues will be an essential part of their evening. Some will enjoy no more than a couple of glasses of wine over a meal. Others will raise their sights a bit higher, drinking for the sole purpose of having a good time and, well, getting drunk.

But a radical proposal from the Scottish Government would put paid to this rite of passage, or at least seriously curtail it.

Ministers want to raise the legal age limit for purchasing alcohol in off-licences and supermarkets from 18 to 21, as part of a crackdown on Scotland's "booze culture".

Other measures under consideration include setting a minimum price for alcoholic drinks, slapping a "social responsibility" surcharge on supermarkets and banning drink promotions such as "three-for-two" offers.

A consultation on the proposals ends next week, after which it will be decided which to include in the new Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill announced earlier this week by Alex Salmond, the First Minister.

Ministers claim that raising the age for off-sales of alcohol, with better enforcement, will reduce "excessive" consumption among young people.

There is little dispute that excessive drinking in Scotland is a massive social ill. Alcohol misuse in Scotland is estimated to cost 2.25 billion a year – 500 for every adult.

Alcohol-related visits to Scottish hospitals have increased by almost 50 per cent over the past decade. The link between alcohol and crime, particularly knife crime, is also indisputable. Almost half of Scottish prisoners last year said they were drunk at the time of the offence.

Despite the obvious scale of the problem, no single SNP policy has attracted as much criticism, with the possible exception of the local income tax.

A coalition of critics has formed to brand the proposal an unjustifiable infringement of civil liberties. The sheer breadth of the opposition has forced ministers to think long and hard about whether this is a sensible proposal to reduce binge drinking among young people, or an unjustifiable invasion into personal freedom.

A petition against it on the Scottish Parliament's website has attracted 3,200 names, including most university student associations, the Scottish Youth Parliament and trade bodies such as the Scottish Grocers' Association.

A group on Facebook, the social networking website, set up to oppose the ban has attracted more than 3,000 members.

Opposition politicians are largely united against the move. Tory leader Annabel Goldie said: "We will continue to lead the opposition to the ludicrous plans to criminalise a responsible, 20-year-old adult who wants to buy a bottle of wine to take home and celebrate the birth of his baby."

Police faced with the consequences of binge-drinking on Friday and Saturday nights largely support the plan.

But speak to officers individually and they recognise civil liberty concerns shared by so many.

Chief inspector Micky Collins, from Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, told The Scotsman: "We have no problem with enforcing this law if it comes about. But I think there might difficulties on a society level. Do we really want to prevent a 19-year-old from buying a whisky gift-pack for his dad's birthday?

"The bigger problem we have is underage drinking at the moment."

A crackdown by his force over the summer led to "vast" amounts of alcohol being recovered from children as young as 12, he revealed.

Not surprisingly, the student community is up in arms at the idea.

Liam Burns, deputy president of the National Union of Students Scotland, says the measure will unfairly penalise the many young people who drink responsibly.

"The vast majority of young people who drink don't cause any anti-social behaviour problems," he says.

Mr Burns claims the image of students getting routinely "wasted" on cheap booze, to the detriment of their education and health, is an outmoded stereotype.

"Most students simply can't afford to drink all the time. Nor do they have the time. The average student is also working 20 hours to pay their way through university."

Rather than target 18-21-year-olds, there should be better enforcement of existing laws, he adds.

Some supermarkets are taking action by requiring people who look under 21 to provide ID to prove they are old enough to buy alcohol.

Putting civil liberties issues to one side, would the alcohol sales ban actually achieve its objective?

Government sources claim a number of pilots schemes have delivered "spectacular" results.

In the Fife town of Cupar, calls to police about antisocial crimes such as vandalism dropped by around 60 per cent, while the number of offences, including assaults, fell by nearly 45 per cent during a four-week experiment.

The scheme, under which every town trader agreed not to sell under-21s alcohol after 4pm on Fridays and Saturdays, was modelled on a similarly successful pilot in Armadale in West Lothian.

It was particularly aimed at stopping over-18s buying alcohol for underage drinkers.

One Edinburgh parent, who has a 15-year-old son, told The Scotsman that banning alcohol to under-21s would make it that bit harder for children to buy drink in corner shops and supermarkets.

"Children can easily get their hands on fake ID on the internet," she says. "The current ban simply isn't working."

However, studies have shown that binge-drinking remains high in other countries that have adopted a minimum drinking age of 21.

The USA's National Survey on Drug Use and Health in 2006 showed that about 10.8 million persons aged 12 to 20 (nearly 30 per cent of the age group) reported drinking alcohol in the previous month, and approximately 7.2 million (19 per cent) were binge drinkers

Even Alcohol Focus Scotland, an ardent fan of the Scottish Government's binge-drinking crackdown, believes other steps would be more effective.

Jack Law, chief executive, says: "Alcohol Focus Scotland gives its support to this proposal but there are other proposals in the government's paper, particularly minimum pricing and improved enforcement of existing age limits, which could achieve the same goals and have stronger evidence bases and we would support these as the highest priority measures."