Young are drunk and high

Teenagers in the United Kingdom are among the heaviest drinkers, smokers and drug-takers in Europe. These findings have just been published in the 1999 ESPAD (European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs) Report.

According to the survey: "A vast majority of the students in Britain have been drinking alcohol during the last 12 monthsThe proportion reporting drunkenness during the same period is higher than average. Use of marijuana or hashish is reported by substantially larger proportions than average and so is the proportion reporting use of other illicit drugs."

Below: use of any alcoholic beverage 20 times or more during the last 12 months. Percentage among all students. 1999.

At a time when the topic of methods of marketing alcohol to young people by the industry is coming to the forefront of public debate, it is significant that UK teenagers are the highest consumers of alcopops in Europe. Although "less than half of the students had any spirits on the last drinking occasion", in the UK and Ireland the large majority of these were girls. On the other hand, if every beverage is taken into consideration, boys appear to drink about 50 per cent more than girls in the ESPAD countries. The largest proportions of teenagers reporting beer consumption were in the Nordic countries, the UK, and Ireland.

Dr Martin Plant, the director of the Alcohol Research Centre, who carried out the British survey, believes that parents should accept more responsibility. At the launch of the report in the Royal College of Physicians, he said that there "is an important issue here, not as to what schools and policy makers should be doing, but a question of parental responsibility.

"If boys and girls live in a family where alcohol, drugs or smoking are taking place then they are going to regard that as normal." In addition, research comparing France and the United Kingdom showed a link between parental knowledge of a teenager's whereabouts on a Saturday night and illegal use of alcohol, other drugs, and tobacco.

More than a third of 15 and 16-year-olds interviewed, 36 per cent, had tried drugs, including cannabis and ecstasy.

According to the ESPAD Report, young people in the United Kingdom, whilst having highest levels of alcohol consumption and drunkenness, were also the most likely to have taken illegal drugs. The survey further reported that 20 per cent of British children smoked daily at the age of 13 or younger - the worst figure in Europe.

The report was not, however, entirely bad news for the United Kingdom, as it showed that there had been a slight fall in hard drug use since 1995, the year the last survey was conducted. Illicit drug-taking is estimated to kill 1,200 people a year in the UK, whereas alcohol is thought to be responsible for 35,000 premature deaths. Smoking accounts for something in the region of 120,000 deaths per year.

These figures were quoted by Dr Plant at the launch of the ESPAD survey.

Paul Boateng, the minister for children and young people, said that the Government had started tackling the problem with "a 10-year strategy". He said: "It is a matter of continuing concern that some young people continue to abuse alcohol and drugs.

"Across government, we are putting in place measures to help, but this cannot just be a matter for government. Encouraging more responsible behaviour among the young is a matter for us all - parents, teachers, friends and communities."

Mr Boateng made these comments in an atmosphere of mounting concern at the continued failure of the government to produce an alcohol strategy.