IT'S A familiar scene on street corners across Scotland – gangs of drunken youths fuelled with cheap drink from their local off-licence.
With booze like White Lightning cider widely available for as little as 35p a can, even young children can afford to get dangerously drunk for under a fiver.
All-day drinking in the park or the high street is almost a rite of passage in Britain's
binge-drinking culture, which sees some teenagers consume around 200 units of alcohol in a week– nearly ten times the adult male's safe limit.
Little wonder, then, that politicians are calling for radical changes to our licensing laws. Today, the SNP government is expected to outline plans to ban under-21s from buying alcohol at supermarkets and off-licences – a radical move that would introduce a separate age limit for bars and off-trade.
It would also place Scotland at odds with the rest of the UK – Labour says it has no plans for a similar change in England.
Retailers have said this will send out "mixed messages" on the issue of responsible drinking.
"They are saying young people can't be trusted to buy alcohol from off-licences or supermarkets," said Fiona Moriarty, director of the Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC).
"You can stop off for a glass of wine in the pub, but you can't pick up a six-pack of beer. If you're 18 you're allowed to go to war and go to the pub for a drink be able to go to the off-licence to buy alcohol. It seems ridiculous."
While the perception is that young people are buying cheap drink over the counter from irresponsible retailers, Ms Moriarty is convinced that some of the blame lies a lot closer to home.
"The government should be looking at 'proxy purchase'. Young people are using friends, colleagues or parents to buy (alcohol) for them. By raising the age up to 21 we will not get rid of that.
"It's about individual responsibility and families taking responsibility for their young people. Is it appropriate for parents to buy alcohol for their children?"
With cut-price alcopops cheaper to buy than a bottle of mineral water, it is no surprise that the number of hospital admissions due to alcohol has soared in recent years. A record number of Scots suffering from drink problems are being treated in hospital – costing the NHS more than £115 million a year.
Patients with alcohol-related conditions are taking up an extra 8,000 bed days compared with three years ago and NHS figures show 10 per cent of A&E admissions are linked to alcohol, with more than 100 children admitted to casualty departments every week due to drink.
The problem was keenly illustrated in February when a senior police officer hit out at the drinks industry for selling beer "cheaper than water" and leaving hospitals to foot the bill.
Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, accused drinks companies of "marketing alcohol to children" and making profits "on the back of misery".
He lambasted parents who are responsible for supplying their young charges with alcohol and warned it was time for Britain to "wake up" to the reality of a binge-drinking epidemic.
"Why is it we have got ourselves into a position where lager is being sold cheaper than water?" asked the former chief constable of Sussex police.
A recent report on binge drinking, commissioned by Positive Futures, found that 52 per cent of young people said they got alcohol from their local corner shop, off-licence or, in a smaller number of instances, their local supermarket. In 16 per cent of these cases young people would wait outside the shop and their friends or neighbours would buy alcohol for them. Young people even resorted to approaching strangers in the street to buy their alcohol, and a staggering 22 per cent obtained alcohol at home from their parents or other family members.
There is growing concern about the impact of discount sales in supermarkets and "two-for-one" offers which encourage youngsters to get drunk on cheap booze before going out to pubs and clubs. Figures for 2006 show that alcohol was 65 per cent more affordable in the UK than it was in 1980, and with Lambrusco for £2.65, alcohol is well within the reach of ordinary teenagers.
The government's announcement comes in the wake of a pilot project in which three Scottish towns banned all off-licence sale of alcohol to under-21s. The change is expected to be rolled out across Scotland as part of an alcohol action plan, which could also include minimum prices for alcohol and a crackdown on discount offers.
"There are many countries around the world where drinking is analogous to Scotland," says Ken Barrie, senior lecturer in alcohol and drugs studies at the University of the West of Scotland. "There are more concerns about drunkenness in Spain. It's a bit alien to them but it is starting to appear.
"People are drinking to get drunk and Scotland is not unique in that."
But for him, raising the age to 21 for alcohol consumption is not the answer. "In this country, we already have a benchmark for purchasing alcohol.
"You need more rigorous enforcement of what we've got, instead of increasing the age limit to 21. That would simply criminalise a large proportion of young people.
"In a culture where alcohol is the main drug, where it is heavily promoted, it's a bit nonsensical to say you can't buy it until you're 21.
"They can have every other aspect of adulthood – they can buy cigarettes, have sex and go to war, so to deprive them of alcohol seems a bit odd."
