A recent test programme in North Devon has shown a marked decrease in alcohol sales to minors:
Officers and young volunteers visited a total of nine businesses and all refused to sell alcohol to 15 and 16 year old young volunteers.
These results are a welcome improvement on a similar exercise held six months ago when a third of off-licenses in Barnstaple and Torrington failed similar checks.
The operation was part of an ongoing project focusing on the problems caused by the sale of age restricted products to youngsters. In previous Devon exercises, …

In this ITN news video interview, Sir Liam Donaldson discusses his opinion on the current state of the youth drinking problem in the UK:
There is no evidence that you should wean children on to alcohol at an early age so they get used to it. So says Sir Liam Donaldson, England’s Chief Medical Officer. The idea that giving youngsters a glass of wine at meal times can be beneficial is dismissed by Sir Liam as a “middle-class obsession”. Instead the evidence shows the earlier children are introduced to alcohol the …

The Guardian today posted some interesting data relating to the use of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco among under-15s from various contries:
So how do our children indulge – and how does it compare in different countries?
Unicef’s Innocenti Research Centre is one of the best sources of data on children’s behaviour and treatment in the world. Its report card on the well-being of children in rich countries was published in 2007 – but is still a fantastic source of useful information.
We’ve extracted some key data from the PDF, showing how children in …