A year ago statistics were published about child substance abuse, or more realistically put...drinking habits. This February just gone Jacqui Smith attempted to use those statistics to justify hounding kids off of the street and further taking away the rights of youths that were (previously) acting completely lawfully, cementing the idea of Labour as a nanny-state with Smith as it's queen.

Some things however didn't make sense, as I uncovered in the statistics. Painting children as alcoholics for having simply ever tried alcohol even if they only did it once was the order of the day, and indeed it seemed a large emphasis was going on to kids drinking in the streets when a large percentage of them actually also drank in their parents home.

Now it is the time of the Telegraph to completely and utterly butcher the actual message of this years statistics, causing potentially one of the most idiotic statements I've ever heard courtesy of Norman Lamb

These are shocking figures, reflecting a culture where binge-drinking is truly out of control.

I call bullshit on this statement, I'll go in to it further but the simple facts are these: the prevalence of drinking alcohol as a youth is at it's lowest for over two decades, the frequency of having drunk alcohol "in the last week" is the same as it was two decades ago (the lowest in the last 20 years), and alcohol consumption has roughly stated the same on average for the last 6 years.

Far be it that they are "shocking" figures, they are encouraging. They show that the child alcohol use of the late 90's to early 2000's has declined to levels that predate the 90's. They show that kids aren't drinking any more year on year than they have been and that overall there is a trend of responsible behaviour over alcohol emerging. So what is the Telegraph on about exactly?

First of all look at the picture they use in the article, it goes a long way to explaining what they are trying to paint for people...

Source

Two kids are paid to stand in the dark of night, on a road, drinking alcohol wearing hoodies. Are you serious? I couldn't have painted a more stereotypical picture if I tried. "Kids in hoodies are all out raping grannies while high on alcopops" should probably have been their headline if they could get away with it.

The fact is, like I said in February, the trend doesn't suggest kids are out drinking on the street and if they are it is because they are no longer allowed to drink in pubs, not because there is a sudden rise in kids drinking. over 60% of kids drank in their parents home, a more accurate picture would have been a child with a bottle of cheap french beer that a middle class father has brought back with him after a business trip, watching big brother with a few of their friends around while mother keeps an eye in the background. Unfortunately that doesn't really fit the image of "broken society" that the media is so desperate to portray through our youth.

The study found that the average amount consumed by teenagers who had drunk recently was 12.7 units a week, equivalent to six pints of beer or almost a bottle and a half of wine.

Quite aside how ridiculous binge drinking measures have become, this statement is irrelevant without basis. We know that kids in general drink beer, lager or cider but not what types. If you take White Lightning as an example then 12.7 units isn't even 3 pints. Not wishing to belittle the amount of alcohol drunk, it would realistically only take 2 or 3 days of relatively small drinking to reach 13 units, hardly the image of kids on 24 hour drinking binges every night is it?

And Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, has paved the way for a ban on anyone under 21 buying alcohol in some parts of the city to tackle the crime and antisocial behaviour linked to binge-drinking.

Well it's nice to know how liberal Boris is after all of his claims eh?

"A child drinking an average of six pints a week is likely to suffer dreadful health consequences later in life." - Norman Lamb

Now hold on a second, a child drinking 12.7 units a week may well suffer "dreadful" but this isn't reality. For a start only 20% of children drink that frequently (lowest level since 1988), while the rest drink once a month or less often, almost 50% not drinking at all. This is despite kids of 15 years being 80% likely to have ever had a drink (even if only one). So quite clearly the figures don't add up to droves of 10 year olds drinking regularly, let alone regularly drinking 6 pints.

In fact breaking it down, the tables show that only 1%, the same as every other year, drink "every day", but only when kids reach 14 do any kids drink almost every day anyway. 11 year olds barely drink more than a few times a year, and even up to 13 only 12% drink regularly once a week or so.

The reality is that 11-13 year olds who drank in the last week(roughly 11% of all kids that age) are mostly (67%) drinking 0-7 units a week. In reality then only 3-4% of 11-13 year olds could even begin to be suspected of drinking 6 pints of alcohol a week.

Is this the show of a massive problem? I don't think it is, I think it shows that there are kids in society that feel the need to drink too much...through peer pressure, through abuse, through other societal pressures and emotional issues, but that in general kids aren't irresponsible at all.

Norman Lamb's attitude is such a basic and general one that it can't be paid any credit. It is apparently ok to drink up to 21 units a week as an adult male, and as a child kids generally don't even drink 7. I'd love some links to studies to show how those levels of alcohol intake affect future health, but in reality kids aren't drinking 6 pints a week. They're drinking maybe 2 pints a week when young, then moving up to 6 pints and beyond as they reach adulthood. Surely this is just normal progression?

The study linked drinking with other "risky behaviours", finding that those who smoke or take drugs are more likely to drink alcohol as well. In addition, pupils who have been expelled out of school or who play truant are more likely to drink alcohol.

Funny that isn't it? Those kids that are cast out of society, that fall in with the wrong crowd, they tend to do these sort of things. So why is it, despite acknowledging this to some degree, that the Telegraph and others still insist on portraying kids as members of society that are a disgrace?

The only thing that is at all a problem, as I said in February, is that those that do get drunk regularly are tending to drink more. This to me shows that they are being forgotten about and are being left unsupported. Curfews, treating them as immature non-citizens, bullying them off the streets and generally curbing their rights won't reverse this situation. Education is clearly working as this is the best year for youth consumption for two decades, but we're still failing the extreme minority...in fact I'd say we're ignoring them so that we can take broader political criticisms of the governments general alcohol strategy and to point fingers at those "nasty yobs".