This week Nicola Sturgeon has outlined the SNP's plans to combat alcohol abuse in Scotland with one of the measures being to raise the age to purchases alcohol in off-licenses to twenty-one. The incentive for Scottish students to go south of the border to university I’m sure has just been increased, as well as Carlisle becoming Scotland’s answer to Calais or if the measures are expanded to pubs, the new Tijuana. But it is not the age of drinkers in Scotland that is behind the high levels of alcohol abuse and underage drinking in Scotland, or elsewhere in the UK for that matter, but rather our culture towards drinking. This is clear when we look to the continent, where France has lower drinking ages to here and half the amount of underage drinking. Some charities like Alcohol Concern even oppose the concept of raising the drinking age to 21. Due to the adverse effect of intensifying the taboo related factor and making alcohol a right of passage and a forbidden fruit.
I write this blog as a former off-license worker in Scotland for over five years with experience of tackling under age drinking at the frontline of the battle. It’s from this background that I oppose the plans for raising the drinking age in Scotland to twenty-one and not out of a sense to bash the SNP.
For starters, most off-licenses are already following a policy of asking for ID from anyone who looks under twenty-one, or basically within the 16-24 age group. With most companies running their own “mystery shop” tests checking up on their staff making sure they are asking for ID. My old company Threshers use to run a scheme called FISH, don’t ask me for what it stood for, but it tested customer service and whether we were asking for ID. They would even send people like myself, then in Scotland, to branches in Manchester to check on their stores there. However, not all shops in Scotland adhere to this policy that is why a more sensible approach would be that offered by the Scottish Labour Party’s suggestion of a national mandatory Challenge 21 scheme.
When I think back to my time behind the counter I remember that the main problem we had was not those under age buying the drink as that was fairly easy to spot, it was actually the smaller independent drink retailers in the area flouting the law or not following policies like ours. This was why the suggestions of Scottish Labour MSPs such as Pauline McNeill who advocate life time bans on shops known to continuously sell alcohol to underage drinkers. As a sales assistant I could personally be fined £1000 for selling alcohol to someone under age but the licence holder would be unaffected by my actions. The licensee could only loose his or her license if caught in the act.
The next major problem was those who were old enough to purchase alcohol who were doing so on behalf of those underage. The latter included friends, parents and siblings generally older than twenty-one who would purchase the alcohol for those they knew to be underage. I had many arguments with parents who genuinely believed that it was perfectly acceptable to buy crates of beer, cider or alcho pops for their young teenage children. I remember on one occasion a rather well heeled gentleman, who came in to buy some bottles of cider for his 13 year old daughter, and became threatening when I explained politely that it was against the law. Then went next door to Tescos, where he left his child outside and walked passed my shop window a few moments latter giving me the finger with one hand, and with the other raising above his head in triumph the alcohol he had bought for his daughter next door!! The only plus side to this story is that he went on to drop the alcohol moments later.
What is needed in this country as a whole is greater investment in education from a young age highlighting the ramification of drinking irresponsibly medically and socially. Not the policy of headline grabbing that the SNP administration is pursuing.
There’s an old Scottish proverb that goes “they talk of my drinking but never my thirst”, something Nicola Sturgeon should consider when they try to bring through this legislation.
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