On warm evenings in Brighton several hundred youngsters gather on the beach to socialise. Anyone who cares to walk past them will see that they, almost to a boy and girl, are clutching cans of strong cider and lager. Their behaviour is mostly good but somewhere, somehow, they are managing to buy vast quantities of relatively potent booze.
Who's selling it to them? Well, the tide has
well and truly turned. At last the Government
and senior police officers are in no doubt where
the blame for selling cut-price alcohol lies -
at the doors of the supermarkets, offies and late-
night shops.
Chief constable of Cheshire Peter Fahy points to the aggressive promotion of alcohol through big price reductions in supermarkets which is not helping parents and police in their attempt to exert control over young people.
Fellow chief constable Bernard Hogan-Howe blames youthful binge-drinking on the rise of
"grog shops" - his name for the cheap and nasty off-licensed shops that rely on booze sales for
most of their profits. Staffed by lowly-paid and inexperienced sales assistants, they provide an easy access point for kids looking to buy booze.
The Government itself has effectively put the
off-trade on notice - stop selling heavily-discounted booze or face a degree of regulation. The extent of the problem was underlined by the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR), which spotted that the price subsidy by the major supermarkets in June last year - World Cup month - was an astonishing £112m.
The pub sector has earned its position on the moral high ground of this debate. That's not to say the sector can yet claim to be completely free of premises that occasionally slip and sell an alcoholic drink to an underage customer. But, by and large, promotions that encourage binge drinking have been rooted out of the on-trade, and age checks by major operators have become ever more stringent.
Now even the media has (mostly) come to realise the tremendous efforts made by pubs to address the issues. There are still some commentators that appear to be dozing. The Guardian home affairs editor Alan Travis claimed last Thursday "Promotions such as £10 entry, drinks free all night" are still widespread." It's just not the case, Alan. Wake up and smell the high-quality, reasonably-priced coffee your local is probably now selling.