This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Teenage binge drinking on the rise in HK
Youth charities in Hong Kong are worried that a legal loophole and lack of government awareness is leading to a rise in binge drinking among teenagers.
According to a report in the South China Morning Post, teenagers are increasingly turning to convenience stores and supermarkets to buy alcohol as a legal loophole means there is technically no age restriction on the sale of alcoholic drinks there as there is in bars, clubs and restaurants.
With on-trade venues increasingly cracking down on underage drinkers (one bar owner interviewed said he spends nearly HK$1 million a year on door security), teenagers are heading for the off-trade where staff routinely do not ask for identification.
They then drink in the streets outside the store, with the popular night-spots of Lan Kwai Fong, Central and Wanchai becoming increasing problem areas.
A spokesman for one of the city’s biggest chains, 7-Eleven, stressed that it was the company’s policy not to sell alcohol to minors even if it was not a legal requirement.
Nonetheless, Chan Wing-kin, a social worker at the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong told the SCMP, that there has definitely been a rise in underage binge drinking over the last five to 10 years.
The problem is that, historically, Chinese culture has ensured that binge drinking, particularly by minors, is not a major problem in Hong Kong as it is in many European and American cities.
Even though 65% of secondary school students admitted to having tried alcohol in a survey conducted by the narcotic division of the Security Bureau in 2008, there are at the moment very few if any statistics on alcohol abuse among under-18s.