AT PARTIES, especially student ones, you are expected to bring booze. It might not be the best quality drink in the world, maybe a few cans of cheap lager or a bottle of Bulgarian country wine, but anyone who doesn't will find their invitations drying up pretty quickly.
But now, if the Scottish Government is to get its way, most student parties will be alcohol-free – or they will be unless younger students can get third years, fourth years or anybody over 21 to buy the drink for them.
While this might create a mo
dest little income stream for post-grads, it will do little else except turn students against the government.
Students do probably drink more than is good for them but, like most things at university, it is a learning experience.
Some students I knew got so badly drunk at the start of their courses that they never touched a drop again, others drank as much as they could for the duration of their time at university but then sobered up pretty quickly afterwards when they realised that employers in the real world were not quite as tolerant as their tutors had been.
But most followed the same pattern of general periods of abstinence interspersed with heavy drinking at parties, gigs and events because this was all they could afford.
What are students to do now? Should they drink like mad at the pub in the knowledge that they face alcohol-free parties after closing time? Or maybe more will turn to easily accessible drugs such as cannabis for their after-pub parties.
The Scottish Government is faced with a difficult problem here. Scotland has a dreadful record with alcohol and the culture of heavy-drinking seems engrained in every generation.
Pilot projects in West Lothian, where shopkeepers banded together to ban the sale of booze to the under-21s on Friday and Saturday nights have been successful with violence and disorder down significantly as a result.
Kenny MacAskill, Scotland's justice secretary, wants to do something about it and, looking at the success of these projects, he has become convinced that something similar could be rolled out across Scotland to great effect. But the real problem here, as Mr MacAskill knows, is not just the 18- to 21-year-olds, it is those aged 17, 16, 15 and even 14 who are getting hold of alcohol.
That's where the drinking culture starts, that's where it does most damage, both in health and social terms and that is where it has to be tackled.
The current limit of 18 for buying alcohol from shops has been abused for decades. Under-18s are getting alcohol from shops. Some buy it themselves and others get older friends and relatives to buy it for them. I could point out now the off-licences in Edinburgh where teenagers could get served when I was at school and no doubt any 15- or 16-year-old could tell you the same today.
The Scottish Government is faced with a choice here. Either it raises the legal age to 21 and hopes this raises the real age at which youngsters are getting drink from 16 to 18 or it actually enforces the existing legal age of 18.
At the end of 2006, there were 17,234 liquor licences in operation in Scotland. A total of 1,380 licensing offences were recorded by the police in 2005-6 and there were 167 convictions. But most of these convictions (83 per cent) resulted in just a fine. Only 30 licences were suspended during the year and only half of these were for off-sales.
In a recent test purchasing exercise, under-age teenagers were served 14 per cent of the time by off-licences. The figures for Lothian and Borders were the most alarming. Of the 51 off-licences tested, 17 failed the test.
What this means is that about a third of off-licences in the Edinburgh area are breaking the law and only about 1 per cent of licensees are having their licences suspended. That cannot be right.
The pilot projects in West Lothian may well have been successful in cutting violence and disorder but it would be interesting to see what effect a zero-tolerance pilot project would have.
What would happen if the authorities announced they were cracking down on all licensees and that anybody who sold drink to anyone without a clear and definitive proof of age would have their licence withdrawn for two years, automatically? If this was done at the same time as a similar crackdown on the over 18s buying drink for youngsters, possibly hitting them with such a hard fine they would never do it again, then maybe we wouldn't need the general rise in the age of buying alcohol in shops for all that the Scottish Government is suggesting.
Last week, ministers called for the voting age to be lowered to 16, claiming it was wrong for teenagers to get married, drive a car and fight and possibly die for their country and not have a say on the way they are governed.
If 16-year-olds are mature enough to have a say in democracy then surely 18-year-olds are mature enough to buy alcohol.
As a caller to the BBC put it most perceptively yesterday, is the Scottish Government telling a 19-year-old squaddie who has just returned from an arduous tour of duty in Afghanistan that he cannot go down the off-licence to buy some beers to celebrate his return with his mates?
Yes, we have a problem with binge drinking, yes we have to do something about it but it would help if the current laws were enforced properly and effectively before we start telling students they either have to go to a party empty-handed or break the law.
It does seem unfair to tell everybody under the age of 21 that they cannot buy alcohol from shops in an attempt to catch an irresponsible minority.
It also seems misguided to change the law before the existing ones have been tried, tested and implemented as they were intended.
