Buckfast-ban proposal is Babycham politics

IT IS a cheeky little red with a distinctly nutty aroma which packs a punch but lacks balance or maturity and leaves a bitter aftertaste. Designed as a tonic restorative, in the wrong setting it can wreak havoc. Cathy Jamieson, the justice minister, has more in common with Buckfast Tonic Wine than she might care to acknowledge.

Ms Jamieson, who is rapidly becoming the new Helen Liddell, has called for a ban on Buckfast, which she believes is a source of anti-social behaviour in the west of Scotland. In response, the Auchinleck Co-op in her Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley constituency is to restrict sales to two bottles per customer.

Help is at hand, however, for the discerning drinker who is looking to lay down a case or two for those special occasions when only cracking open the vintage Buckfast will do. A moronic rampage through the town centres of Ayrshire springs to mind, or the ritualistic defacing of bus shelters in Lanarkshire. The distributors of Buckfast are threatening to sue Ms Jamieson for "defaming" the product.

With sales of 28 million a year, there is more than just a fast buck at stake. Weasel-faced youths in Burberry baseball caps with a penchant for quaffing the product alfresco and without the hindrance of anything as bourgeois as a polystyrene cup, have been hideously besmirched. Ms Jamieson, however, remains as defiant as a latter-day Joan of Arc.

Meanwhile, the Benedictine monks of Buckfast Abbey in Devon continue to push their noxious concoction, cocooned from the effect it is having in some of Scotland’s poorest communities. More than 70 per cent of Buckfast’s sales come from the west of Scotland.

It’s hard not to have some sympathy with Ms Jamieson’s position. Under-age drinking and its consequent anti-social behaviour are making the lives of her constituents miserable. Buckfast is the bampot tipple of choice and the easy availability of a drug is often associated with its abuse. But the call to ban Buckfast is born of frustration, expediency and opportunism. It chimes with the "ban it or bomb it" approach that New Labour has to complex problems it cannot, or will not, tackle at source.

What mitigates against Ms Jamieson is not merely that a ban on Buckfast is a ridiculously simplistic response to a much wider problem, but that Helen Liddell, the former Scottish Secretary, used the same tactics. The result was a surge in Buckfast sales. It was a campaign which backfired more spectacularly than a 20-year-old Skoda with a dodgy exhaust. So why repeat the exercise?

Ms Jamieson is right to be concerned about the way we consume alcohol. In the last 30 years, wine consumption has risen by 500 per cent and the number of Scottish liquor licences has increased by 67 per cent to more than 17,000, despite the fact that population size has changed little. Many of these new outlets are 20 times bigger than the traditional pub. Our alcohol consumption has risen by 25 per cent in the time that France’s has fallen by 35 per cent.

There is no short-term fix for Scotland’s alcohol problem and no single solution, but there are measures which could be taken immediately.

The first is to implement existing legislation. We have a series of laws which ought to be effective in preventing the sale of alcohol to minors and the inebriated. They are rarely enforced and when they are, the penalties are laughably lenient.

In 2001, there were more than 900 offences in Scotland against the liquor-licensing laws, the majority involving the sale of alcohol to minors. Eighty-six per cent of convictions resulted in a fine and the average fine was 149. This is not simply about ineffectual policing: the police need the support of the courts and the local-authority licensing boards, and that hasn’t been forthcoming in the past.

The age at which young Scots start their drinking careers has dropped from 17 or 18, when the brain is fully developed - or as fully developed as it is likely to be given the state of the education system - to 13 or 14, when it is still growing. There are pubs in Scotland into which no self-respecting 18-year-old will venture because they are full of kids. The long-term effects of this cultural shift have yet to be felt.

Our destructive relationship with alcohol is not just the preserve of lawless youth, however. Increasingly, the mainstream is drinking to extreme. One in four of us is said to be drinking hazardously. Until the largely law-abiding majority changes its attitude to what is socially acceptable, there will be little progress.

The medical profession - the most powerful voice in the health debate - continues to use outdated methods with little proven efficacy. It advocates bringing pressure to bear on the drinks industry and increasing taxation to push up the cost. But the drinks industry is adept at resisting pressure, and using a fiscal cosh is fraught with difficulties in a single European market hell-bent on tax harmonisation.

THERE are, however, three institutions - television, universities and supermarkets - which could be held much more accountable for the way drinking has developed in Britain over the past 30 years.

Excessive alcohol consumption, which used to be portrayed on television as aberrant, is now portrayed as the norm. Twenty years ago, it was the maverick male who drank heavily; today, it is the young heroines. The subliminal message of a series such as Inspector Morse was that drink was a sign of weakness which contributed to the main character’s loneliness and unhappiness. Today, the subliminal message is that heavy drinking increases your sexiness, attractiveness and fun quotient. Excessive drinking has gone from being something shameful to something "cool".

Half of all Scots go on to tertiary education. Cheap drink and an absence of parental control contribute to an estimated two student deaths annually, according to research carried out by Professor Christine Godfrey at York University. If these findings are replicated nationally, that is the equivalent of 240 student deaths a year in Britain. Most of the associations setting up stalls during freshers’ week are marketing themselves on the basis of cheap, plentiful drink. Drinking to excess is a normal part of university life. It is the abstainers who are seen as the oddballs.

Then there are the supermarkets. They have been instrumental in de-mystifying wine and promoting alcohol as cheaply as possible. In the past, supermarkets had a separate till for alcohol. Now they portray it as just another everyday commodity, on a par with coffee or flowers. They seldom publish the profits they are making from drink - for good reason.

Ms Jamieson and the Scottish Executive had the opportunity to do something constructive and meaningful to deal with Scotland’s alcohol consumption in 2002 when they launched - to no fanfare whatsoever- the national alcohol strategy. It was preceded by two of the best, most heartfelt debates the Scottish Parliament has heard. But the plan lacked political momentum. If it was meant to be a flagship policy, it was holed below the waterline before it was out of harbour.

If the justice minister is serious about tackling problem-drinking, she should consider overhauling the national alcohol strategy and providing it with teeth and funding. She will find plenty willing to back her and support her.

Calling for a ban on Buckfast may be vintage New Labour, but it is Babycham politics - frothy, sickly, outmoded and lacking bottle.