The World According To Adam – Underage Drinking

Posted on January 31, 2010 by Adam

There is something we didn’t do when we were young which the kids of today seem to do a lot of. We never hung around on the streets. We played. We did things and if we were bored we either sat around at home – which a lot of kids still do – or we’d gather together and our collective intelligence would come up with something to do. It was never to just hang around outside the post office and harass patrons into buying them cigarettes and alcohol. Truth is, if they weren’t so lazy they could probably go elsewhere and buy it themselves without question.

Although drunken kids aren’t exactly high up on the list of societies problems, they are a problem when can change the community. They’re intimidating which stops people from going out. There always used to be a group of them hanging around outside the local train station sipping their cans of Fosters hidden in the sleeves of their hoodies and certain people would avoid them like the plague. I’ve walked past them many times and as long as you don’t irritate them, they won’t irritate you. This is the same theory as wasps and like wasps, this is not always the case. I’ll admit that underage drinking is a problem that needs to be fixed and I can’t help but think there are lots we can do to help solve this problem.

Firstly I have a suggestion that will cause a lot of people to hate me. Raise the age limit to buy alcohol to 21. Now I know that I say this on the more comfortable side of this age limit but there wasn’t such a big problem when I was 18! To alleviate this though I’d allow people over 18 to drink in pubs, clubs and restaurants, but they still can’t purchase. This means that if a group go to the pub and at least one is 21 and the rest can prove they are all over 18, they can still drink. This would also mean that 18^th birthday parties can still be fuelled by booze but it would have to be purchased by an adult which it mostly is anyway. The only stipulation is that the person over 21 must be part of the party. They can just get anyone to buy drinks for them. This will be difficult to prove though and should be left to the staff to decide.

The new system of governing shops is has now been lowered to two strikes – if they’re caught selling to underage kids twice in three months their license is taken away. I’d lower this to one or increase the time limit to a year. Anything to get the shop keepers to stop selling to the kids in the first place. I’d also put a minimum price limit based on the strength of the alcohol. This would mean that the super strength ciders such as White Lightning will no longer be quite as cheap.

Finally, and I’m looking to the future here, there would be a grand ID scheme. This would be a super ID card combining general ID, driving license, passport, national insurance and maybe even bank cards all into one. Maybe this would all be integrated into some for of biometrics too so to pay for something you need only your finger or eye. Every single person would have this ID and they’d need it to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Of course nothing will completely remove the problem. A lot of kids aren’t even buying it, they’re just bringing it from home and there’s little we can do about this… except shoot the parents maybe.