If you were to believe everything you read in today's news about Jacqui Smith's railing against families and youths that don't do enough to curb under-age drinking then you'd think that families are to blame for mass under-age drinking and that under-age drinkers are all yobs causing chaos and destruction. My first instinct was that the nature of the statements she's making show a lot of ambiguity and potential here for some kind of spin. So let's look in to this report and what she's said, from the Times...

A "tipping point" has been reached where more 13-year-olds in Britain have drunk alcohol than those who have not, the Home Secretary said yesterday.

All of this data she is quoting comes from a very comprehensive and well written report called "Smoking, Drinking and Drug Use among Young People in England in 2006" (Fuller et al.), and indeed she is correct in saying that more 13 year-olds have drunk alcohol than have not. What exactly is the problem with this? We're not talking about sips of alcohol this much is true, but there is no correlation between drinking any alcohol and being a raging beast on the streets keeping her afraid to go outside. It is not illegal for children to drink alcohol, only for them to buy it, we must remember this given the victimisation that will be talked about later.

As an aside, there was also some attacking of those offering "deals" on alcohol, especially bars and clubs using loss leaders or two for one offers, and supermarkets with their cheap prices. This is obviously a separate issue but I'll be interested in the review as a change in supermarket prices is desperately needed, firstly to combat binge drinking and secondly to help the businesses around the country that suffer from not being able to afford to compete with supermarkets for trade. But for now, back to the issue of under-age drinking

"There is alcohol education in schools, but we need to make sure this is as effective as possible in alerting children to the dangers of drinking."

Time to start actually looking at the facts here, for me the warning sirens are going that data is being misused to make a point and a crusade. So, from the previously mentioned report, the truth is indeed that 53% of 13 year olds have tried a drink. But if you look at the frequency of drinking only 10% of them drink at least once a week, the vast majority of 13 year-olds either not drinking (50%) or only drinking a few times a year (25%). The trends would show that this is a decline, as the amount of students never having had a drink has increased to its highest recorded level, some 11% higher than 1990.

With this, a trend for lesser drinking in the last two decades, also comes a trend of people drinking less frequently...returning much closer to the frequency people would drink in 1990. 13 year-olds have admittedly had a roller-coaster ride in terms of frequency, but as with all other age groups they are becoming more responsible than they were come 1996. Why is this important? Well Jacqui Smith can pontificate about alcohol education in the UK but it is clear that however it is being done it is proving effective at bringing the problem back to the level it was during years where no-one thought there was a widespread problem.

She rounded on parents who provide large amounts of alcohol for their children and demanded thay[sic] they take greater personal responsibility. "Nearly half of the alcohol obtained by young people appears to come from the family home. It is clear that parents have to hear the message as well. The idea that you can hand your kids a six-pack of lager and tell them to disappear for the evening – with no thought to the consequences – is frankly baffling to me."

Sorry? parents just handing kids booze and telling them to piss off? Where is the evidence for this? It's certainly not in this report where it clearly shows that at least 23% of kids get alcohol from their parents yet almost three times that amount usually drink at home (61%). Far from being a situation of parental negligence it is clear that the more kids are drinking at home than ever before with alcohol their parents didn't give them, yet also more kids are drinking on the streets than ever before. Why?

Because licensing law has pushed more kids away from drinking in pubs and clubs under-age and on to the streets where they lack even basic supervision. I'm not going to rail against licensing law here, but to try and suggest that the rise of kids on our streets drinking is because of parents is patently untrue, though it is never in Labour's interest to blame themselves and their policies however rigid for the situation they now wish to fix.

Ms Smith announced that she would look at amending existing laws, dating from 1997, which allow police to confiscate alcohol in public places if they suspect a person is under 18.

So you wish to penalise kids that perhaps don't feel comfortable drinking at home if they're going to drink, perhaps have nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, and are doing something that anywhere but on the street would be legal? And it's only for people that appear for be under 18 as well? I hate to say it but I feel that people not drinking on the streets over 18 are likely doing more damage to property and each other than those under 18 sharing some white lightning. Of course this is an unquantified statement, but I'd really not be surprised if something did exist to back it up.

The Home Office claimed that the police had been prevented from using the law because they needed to prove they had “reasonable suspicion” that the children were about to consume the alcohol. Parenting contracts are to be extended to cover parents whose children have been found drinking, as revealed in The Times yesterday. A scheme in which offenders with alcohol-related convictions are referred to counsellors is to be extended to ten more areas.

Not only will you confiscate their drink, but you will also penalise the parents...again, parents that are just as likely to punish their kid or not care about what they do as those that will actually step up and do something. It just doesn't seem to all correlate to me. Other figures show that the social acceptance of kids about getting drunk is falling, the desire to get drunk is falling, the amount of kids actually getting drunk is falling. Everything is falling and yet the Home Secretary now announces there is a problem that needs more police intervention (shock horror), meaning however much more paperwork and load for a police force obviously stretched. But I just can't see the problem.

figures have largely returned to levels of those before the big boom in alcohol and advertising, and generally kids have shifted from the pubs and clubs they are now more stringently checked for and in to the streets, while more drink in situations where direct adult supervision is possible. I feel that there's a trick being missed here, and Jacqui Smith trying to claim more education is needed runs contrary to the trends that see education having a greater effect than ever before, and more kids remembering their alcohol education lessons than ever before.

What would be interesting to see is just WHY kids choose to drink. There is a suggestion of peer pressure and wishing to fit in that could still be targeted, though I would suggest that education is less of a factor in changing that than social attitudes and upbringing, but what of the correlation between abusive parents? What about the drinking levels compared to amenities in the area? What about it being something as simple as Britains children being some of the most unhappy and impoverished in the developed world?

As an interesting correlation that is worth thinking about, around 20% of British children claim to be unhappy, and around 15% drink once a week or more. If the problem was with education and parents, or availability of alcohol, wouldn't we see much higher regular drinking figures?

These issues above are not talked about or touched upon my our Home Secretary, the kids in question are only victimised and then tied to parents with yet more contracts in some vain hope of solving the problem, problems described that are minor problems if issues at all. As with most Labour policies it is clear the plan is to treat a symptom and not the root of the problems, probably because it costs less money that way.