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'Don't give children alcohol in the home until they reach 15'
Mark Blunden29 Jan 2009
MINISTERS today warned parents not to give young teenagers alcohol at home in an attempt to tackle high consumption among children.
Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, is set to unveil new guidelines which will advise parents to ban young people from drinking alcohol until they are 15. He is expected to say that older children can safely try small amounts of wine and low-strength beers with parental supervision.
Dr Donaldson's advice will set a new template for government alcohol policy, but sources say ministers are wary of condoning drinking by under-15s.
One source said: "This is advice for parents who want it, not a nanny-state attempt tell people how to raise their own kids."
Margaret Morrissey, spokeswoman for Parents Outloud, said: "The dilemma is that unless you introduce them slowly to drinking when they do start at 15 or 16 they go absolutely ballistic. So maybe there is something to be said for what happens in France where you can get diluted wine for youngsters."
Department of Children, Schools and Families data show how children regularly take alcohol from home. Nearly half of 11 to 15-year-olds claiming to drink 14 or more units a week say they get the alcohol from their parents. In 2006/7, under-18s were involved in nearly 10 per cent of all alcohol-related hospital admissions.
Ed Balls, the children's secretary, instigated the review of alcohol in 2007.He has said previously that he wants British children to be more sensible in their approach to alcohol.
Mr Balls said that at 16 or 17 he was allowed "a small glass of wine at lunch on a Sunday or a shandy or a Babycham at Christmas".
Presently there are no government guidelines on the amount under-18s should be allowed to drink, with or without their parents present.
Legally children can start drinking aged just five.
Dr Donaldson reportedly studied how the Netherlands approached the problem of underage drinking. The Dutch allow children under 16 and 17 to drink beers and wine that contain less than 15 per cent alcohol.
Now ministers want the current system overhauled so that children are introduced to alcohol more gradually and do not binge.
Reader views (12)
Palace of Westminster according to Wiki has 19 bars,
Alcohol ban please, I don't want important decisions made
in a place where booze is available 24/7.
Hypocrites.
- Donald, Macclesfield, 30/01/2009 12:23
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the way i bring up my children is no business of the government. who do they think they are by INSTRUCTING US, YOU WILL DO THIS , YOU WILL NOT DO THAT!
Wake up, we are not belongings of the british governmet.
- Brian, london, 30/01/2009 12:18
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I must admit, I don't know any French people who give their children wine though I have seen them given a watered-down (and I mean REALLY watered down) half-glass in other areas of France. However, I've also not seen loads of teenagers lying unconscious in their own vomit, either - or even drunk, for that matter, so they must do something right.
The French don't knock back their drinks like the British do: children get to see wine (and it is mostly wine, not spirits) drunk moderately as a normal part of life no different from the neighbouring jug of water. There's no bid deal about it, thus circumnavigating the teenage need to rebel. But then I find French teenagers much more confident and mature - the State instills independence, self-sufficiency and social responsibility into them as soon as they can walk and perhaps that has more to do with it.
- Roz, Chamonix, France - if it really matters!, 30/01/2009 12:15
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I wish people would stop citing how people drink in other countries as if it had anything to do with this. The British have always had a totally different attitude to alcohol than have the French, Spanish and Italian. Probably because wine does not grow in large quantities in this country and, until very recently, was always comparatively expensive. (We also have a completely different climate). The idea of my parents wasting expensive wine on children would not have entered their heads. The idea, also, of having to actually tell people that alcohol is not good for children seems to me absolutely unbelievable - surely it is obvious?
Like other adult pleasures, drink is suitable only for adults. A drunken child is surely an appalling disgrace to everyone and yet now you see them in every street in the land. We don't allow children to smoke - so why permit them to drink?
- Sallyann, London UK, 29/01/2009 17:15
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Cut the pocket money and the boozing will slow down and then stop
- Keith Price, Luton, England, 29/01/2009 16:33
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Mr Balls said that at 16 or 17 he was allowed "a small glass of wine at lunch on a Sunday or a shandy or a Babycham at Christmas".
He does seem like a babycham drinker.
- Tom, Watford (UK), 29/01/2009 15:56
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We need to start taking account of the fact that people travel now. When I was 17 I went on an exchange to France and the parents I was staying with gave me cider - it never occurred to them not to, because their daughter had been brought up with it. I wasn't used to it and didn't know what this fizzy drink was. Let's just say the encounter ended in pain and embarrassment on both sides...
- Suzanne, London, 29/01/2009 13:31
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Try telling this to a French family! There, the children start drinking a little wine (maybe watered down) with their meals well before they are ten. Under parental supervision, of course. And does France have the problems that the UK doews with teenage drunkenness and "chav" behaviour? No it does not!
It's surely much better that children learn what alcoholic beverages are like as a part of growing up in a normal family, than for parents to ban them from drinking while indulging themselves, and for the children then to take to boozing as part of the natural teenage rebelliousness that we all go through. Forbidden fruit is always more tempting.
- Nigel, London, 29/01/2009 12:31
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I find it very hard to believe that nearly half of 11 to 15 year old children say their parents purchase and allow them to drink 14 units (7 pints of lager) or more a week.
Most kids get older friends to buy alcohol for them and they get the strongest / cheapest types like cider less bucks for more effect.
Lets sort out why children, young adults need to get wasted in the first place? not more bull by a government that changes its mind on polices week in week out. Give the youth positive role models and stop promoting celebrity wasters.
- Gavin Holcroft, Cornwall, 29/01/2009 12:23
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Frankly, this Government's advice on ANY subject is generally irrelevant and uninformed - why should THIS be any different?
I live in a country where alcohol is introduced in a serious responsible manner at the dinner table, where kids learn what sensible social drinking is - and binge drinking and alcoholism levels are only a tiny percentage of those in the UK. So, seriously, whose advice would you follow?
I fervently wish the UK Government would focus on REAL issues (eg: education, the NHS ....) before wasting millions' of tax payers' money on trivia .....
- Marianne, SW France, 29/01/2009 11:50
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Once again we have joined up lunacy by this Govt.. Here we have a Government who fought tooth and nail to relax drinking laws so that every wee boy and his dog could buy as much cheap alcohol as possible. Pubs, a controlled environment, are going out of business at an alarming number per day, whilst Tesco et all can sell lager for next to nothing in a limited controlled environment.(Get your big brother or sister to buy it for you) Once again the talk is being talked but no realistic action is being taken. If this Govt did clamp down on alcohol sales they would lose millions in their tax revenues, and that is all they are interested in. Gordon Brown should remember in these times of financial inpropriety that the biggest fraud is to cheat oneself by not admitting failure.
- Alan, carlisle uk, 29/01/2009 10:59
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What people do in their own homes is none of the governments business, if the government just got on with their own job the country would be in a much better state than it is.
- Peter Fordham, Pego, Spain, 29/01/2009 10:56
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