Why we should say no to under-21 alcohol ban

Drug dealing is illegal. Shortselling’s been banned. But across Scotland this week young people will be short-sold the world’s most damaging drug without a care for their long-term future.

Fresher’s Week means student unions, supermarkets, corner shops and off licences will offer four bottles of wine for the price of two, five vodka shots for £1, and double measures for an extra 50p to make sure a “normal” students first habit is the drink habit and their brand or outlet is the preferred choice. Alcohol retailers during Fresher’s Week exhibit as much care for young people as the short-term-minded spivs and speculators who brought down HBOS -- but there’s no outcry about the impact of their irresponsible behaviour.

Fresher’s Week mayhem is a rite of passage, isn’t it. A chance for hardworking teenagers to let their hair down after a long summer working at Tesco checkouts. A way for young people to bond. A Scottish custom.

More’s the pity, all the above is true.

Anyone viewing the annual Bingefest without a tolerant, accepting, “what are they like” attitude is dismissed as a killjoy, friend of Kenny MacAskill or worst of all – a hopelessly un-hip parent. So it comes as no surprise to learn that the SNP’s youth wing is opposed to the party’s proposal to raise the age for buying drink from off sales from 18 to 21.

After all, young people live only to drink, dodge school or lectures and hang around street corners threatening old ladies -- even earnest young nationalists. And the debate was organised by Edinburgh students during Freshers Week – so what did anyone expect.

Well, let’s stop right there. This kind of generalised, dismissive thinking about young people has driven a wedge between politicians, parents and teenagers for generations. Demonising young people with ASBOs and curfews hasn’t tackled violence or helped win their trust, respect or interest. Something the SNP appear to have noticed because such “anti-youth” legislation has been absent from the first year of SNP social policy proposals.

Indeed Scottish committees of the great and the good have called for cannabis, “shooting galleries” and sexual activity between consenting teenagers to be legalised, and in June the Minister for Parliament called for a voting age of 16.

But with this single proposal, the SNP are in danger of alienating an age group they need to keep on board. Not just because 18 year olds can vote. Not just because demonised youth became Labour’s biggest headache. But because the under 21 measure is distracting attention from other parts of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill, which could revolutionise our approach to drinking and act as a template for the rest of Europe.

According to the Guardian, “As with the ban on smoking in public places, Scotland's alcohol strategy could set a precedent for what happens in the rest of the UK.” But not if opponents manage to turn alcohol control into an absurd joke. Not if opinion formers, newspapers and opposition politicians characterise the SNP as born-again miseries, bigger nannies than Labour, and out of touch with what it is to be Scottish. Fun-hating, reality-denying bureaucrats so dour they make Gordon Brown look like one of the Chuckle Brothers. Once that characterisation is complete, no change in alcohol policy will be politically possible. And that would miss the opportunity of a lifetime.

Hands up who knows that the Licensing Bill’s main proposal is not the under 21 ban but minimum pricing -- which means the Scottish government would set prices which could not be undercut by happy hours, or two for the price of one promotions. It would raise the cheapest prices, recreate a level playing field between all drink retailers – pubs, supermarkets, clubs, off sales and corner shops and it’s backed by overwhelming evidence that cheap booze encourages more drinking by everyone – not just 18-21 year-olds. The bill has delighted the medical community across Europe by advancing one basic aim. That government must reduce overall consumption in the whole population. That’s the whole population -- not just young people.

So why undermine the entire ethos and the most important proposal in this Bill by pushing the ban on under 21s buying off-sales booze?

There’s no evidence the 18-21 age group are a particular problem. Indeed, CARDAS the youth group opposed to the under 21 ban does want to ban private companies organising “huge alcohol binge tours targeted at students in bars and clubs”.

On the evidence front, Professor Sheila Bird of the Royal Statistical Society has said pilot bans haven’t proved a cut in crime. In the four study areas, other measures like using decoy teenagers were deployed at the same time and may have muddied the evidential water. And describing a fall in crime incidents from 5 to 2 as a 60% cut in offending, is indeed “naughty.”

There may small crime benefits. But they are surely vastly outweighed by the negative and mistrustful direction of travel.

Alcohol misuse is shortening and cheapening Scottish lives. And young people are learning from their elders that when it comes to our drink culture, no price is too high to pay in order to belong.

Vomiting, wetting the bed, violence, sickies, early deaths, drink driving, depression, deceit and feeling rubbish every morning. Add to this our rocketing rates of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease … and even divorce. How many first encounters and final arguments in marriages have been drink-fuelled? Legislators cannot hold their heads high. The single most embarrassing spectacle at the Scottish parliament to date was the ham-fisted attempt to change our licensing laws in 2006. Petty party politics scuppered years of sober planning and debate.

The consensus building around the rest of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Bill is too important to throw away on this under 21 sticking point. Its time for the SNP to be big enough to let it go.

Comments

[Christian]

We need radical measures to stop Scotland's addiction to alcohol. This is one proposed measure, anyone disagreeing with it should come up with another to replace it and please don't come up with education, education is what we have had for years and it is not radical enough.
Let's be bold and brave about the state of our nation's health, let's not find more excuses to do nothing different to what we already do.