Too much too young?

This morning, Srabani Sen, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, called for a more active role from the drinks industry in reducing alcohol harm among children. Speaking at the organisation’s annual conference in central London today, she said there was “a greater expectation on the drinks industry to increase their contribution to reduce alcohol harm.” Two reports were released.

The first report entitled Time Gentlemen Please outlines a number of policy recommendations that Alcohol Concern believe, if adopted, will significantly affect the underage drinking rate. “It pulls together the themes of our Raising the Bar campaign and looks at the contribution that could and should be made from the drinks industry,” said Sen at the start of today’s conference, called Too Much Too Young? Alcohol and Young People. 

She admitted the organisation was “calling on Ofcom for a ban on alcohol advertising before the watershed (between 6am and 9pm).

“The alcohol industry say they are not interested in targeting children… then why not voluntarily stop promoting products on TV before the watershed?” she asked. 

A second report called Cheap at twice the price: young people, purchasing power and alcohol, looks at children’s buying power of alcohol, by monitoring pocket money and supermarket pricing. “We found that pocked money has increased by 600% over the last 20 years and that teenagers with more money are more likely to drink, and in public places,” said Sen. “In some supermarkets,” she continued, “for less than the average weekly pocket money, you could buy four times the daily safe limit of alcohol for an adult.”

 “We are urging the government to put up taxes.”

She also told the room that Alcohol Concern’s objective “is gold standards as the norm – alcohol, if mishandled, is potentially a dangerous product and therefore the standards to selling, marketing and advertising alcohol need to be the highest.”

She also said that Alcohol Concern was looking for “independent scrutiny of the drinks industry. The drinks industry operate a number of self-regulating codes and some are good, others weak, but there is no independent scrutiny of the effectiveness of those codes. What are the consequences of breaching? And are sanctions enforced?”

Finally, she urged the audience to “complain”.

“I find it hard to navigate around the multiplicity of codes, but I urge you to complain to trade bodies who need to know if their members are breaking their own codes.”

© Patrick Schmitt, db 7 November 2007