The Chief Constable of Cheshire, Peter Fahy, has taken the opportunity of a cruel and senseless death in his county to call for tougher action against young anti-social drinkers. His proposals are partly right.

The one which has attracted the most media attention - his suggestion that the legal age for purchasing alcohol be raised from 18 to 21 – is the least sensible. As anyone who has ever been a teenager will remember, plenty of people already buy alcohol before reaching the legal age.

So raising that age limit – preventing groups like university undergraduates from drinking – will result in a law that is even more widely flouted. (It is all the more ridiculous a suggestion for being made in the same week that some of Chief Const. Fahy’s colleagues have suggested allowing 16-year-olds to serve as Community Support Officers: “You can help catch criminals, sonny, but you’ll have to work for five years before you can enjoy your first after-work pint.”)

More importantly, it is not the act of buying alcohol that is the problem, nor even getting drunk – it is the minority act of behaving in a violent or obnoxious fashion afterwards. Hence the right laws to focus on are those against drunk and disorderly conduct, or anti-social behaviour.

It would be very satisfying if law makers and enforcers could sweep away violent behaviour with something as simple as a higher drinking age. But the task is a tougher one – and, as Chief Const. Fahy has also highlighted, it involves us all.

He is right to criticise those parents who ‘turn a blind eye’ to their children’s loutishness, and who fail to instil a ’sense of social responsibility’ in their young. He is right that ‘those who promote alcohol as glamorous’ should think about the effect of the drinks they are pushing on their customers.

And he is right to say we must act ‘as a nation’ to tackle the problem. As we here at Platform 10 would say, we’re all in this together. There is a reason why other countries which have lower drinking ages, or where children can enjoy a tipple in the company of their parents, have fewer problems with drink-related disorder. Younger though their drinkers are, they have a more mature attitude to alcohol. We should be trying to foster that in British children, not hiding from the problem by raising the drinking age.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 11:47 am , written by Stephen and is filed under Quality of Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.