Shameless bullying over booze

Monday June 16, 2008

Changing our cultural behaviour cannot be done by introducing restriction after restriction, argues Brian Monteith

“Sorry Jenny, you can’t taste your mum’s Mateus Rose, and hard luck, Johnny, you can’t sip the froth off my pint of Boddingtons. The Government won’t let me. You’ll have to wait until you’re both eighteen – when, if you’re lucky, I can still take you both down the pub and it’s then up to the landlord how much we drink.”

This farcical but entirely predictable conversation – where parents have been removed of all responsibility for teaching their children how to consume alcohol safely – is now only around the corner.

That’s the way we are headed after the Government announced a review of government guidelines as a crackdown on “binge drinking” – those weasel words that media newscasts so love.

Maybe if it was a crackdown on the sloppy misreporting that relies on sweeping generalisations and junk science I’d be raising a glass to it – but that would be illiberal of me so I had better resist the temptation.

Supervision

Currently, any child aged five or over is legally allowed to try alcohol at home under parents’ supervision.

Options likely to be considered are raising the age at which children can legally be given alcohol by their parents, further restrictions on the advertising of alcohol, more laws to stop teenagers drinking in public spaces such as prosecuting parents, tougher rules for bars and off-licences that sell alcoholic drinks to under-age children and extra alcohol education in schools.

No doubt further calls by anti-alcohol activists for higher taxes will also be considered.

All of this comes after the Government’s own figures showed that the number of 11-to-15 year-olds taking alcohol regularly dropped from a quarter to a fifth between 2001 and 2006.

The ban of alcoholic branding on football jerseys is a just a recent example of how the state believes it has to bully us all to be have better – despite the fact that the majority of us remain law-abiding, well-mannered and usually sober members of society.

Authentic

As a parent of two boys now in their early twenties let me provide some simple observations.

Kids demand football strips with “Carlsberg” or “Guinness” emblazoned across the chest because they want the authentic strip their heroes wear – not some diddy imitation. The only way to curb the demand is to ban the advertising of alcohol branding on any sports-related clothing – no doubt something that will ultimately come. Did it make my sons want to drink Carlsberg? No, they prefer real ale.

Restrictions on a popular drinks such as alcopops or the practice of drinking outside can result in kids switching to stronger drinks such as cider and imbibing out of sight of anyone – a far more dangerous situation.

Making alcohol difficult for our youth to obtain simply criminalises more people who break the law to buy it for their friends or siblings. And can I point out that “more and better” sex education in schools with less parental responsibility has been accompanied by an explosion of under age sex, abortions and sexually transmitted disease.

Cheaper

When it comes to the cost of alcohol, there is much less drunkenness and loutish behaviour in countries such as Spain where duty-paid alcohol is CHEAPER than duty-free drink in the UK.

Changing our cultural behaviour cannot be done by introducing restriction after restriction – especially in a society where the state absolves people of so much of their own responsibility for themselves and their families and has worked tirelessly to see that there is NO SHAME in behaving badly. After all, it’s society’s fault – not Johnny’s or Jenny’s.

The trend is clear – having learned nothing about the futility of trying to change our social behaviour through the introduction of more and more laws such as the smoking ban and restrictions on tobacco – the politicians and their puritanical functionaries are going to bully us all again, this time to conform to their ideal view of mirthless sobriety.

Brian Monteith is policy director of The Free Society