The answer to teen alcoholism?
Herald Scotland
Special report: Rachelle Money

Can you imagine the entire month of January being designated a “dry month” during which Scots were discouraged from drinking alcohol?

Or turning up to T in the Park and finding out that alcohol was banned from the festival site?

These are just some of the ideas floated by the Scottish Youth Commission on Alcohol, which will publish a list of recommendations on Tuesday aimed at changing Scotland’s destructive relationship with alcohol.

The report, given exclusively to the Sunday Herald, lists 38 radical recommendations, some of which suggest that younger people are less tolerant of alcohol than has been widely assumed.

Last year the Scottish Government said it wanted to explore the best ways to “tighten restrictions on alcohol advertising” in relation to young people. But the commission goes further, calling for an outright ban on all alcohol advertising in public places and the media.

Established last March, the commission is the first in Scotland. Sixteen youth commissioners, recruited by the YoungScot charity, spent a year travelling around Scotland and Europe, visiting government bodies, alcohol and youth projects, as well as interviewing police, NHS staff and representatives from the alcohol industry.

The commission admits that many people will find the suggestions in its report – its first piece of work – hugely ambitious and at times controversial.

The youth commissioners, aged between 14 and 22, want to see:

iTunes vouchers and similar rewards to encourage people into leisure activities that don’t involve alcohol.

Scotland promoted as a destination for safe hen and stag parties, instead of booze-filled weekends.

A feasibility study into whether advertising regulation can be extended to online material, including music videos.

An independent body with reduced alcohol industry influence to regulate alcohol promotion across the UK.

The Youth Commission also wants to bring in some radical ideas, such as an alcohol-free day at T in the Park, and for January to become a “dry month”, with activities such as free sports offered.

Shona Robison, the public health minister, backed the report, saying “decisive and radical action” was needed to address the nation’s alcohol problem.

The report has been broadly welcomed, but some people questioned how realistic the recommendations are, how representative the youth commissioners are of young people in Scotland, and the likelihood of the recommendations becoming reality.

One youth commissioner, 22-year-old Laura Caven, from Larbert, said the recommendations were “not meant to shock people but make them think twice about how much they drink”.

Miss Caven, a postgraduate student in alcohol and drug studies, said young people were better at making recommendations because they were “looking at an old problem with fresh eyes”.

One of her motivations for becoming a youth commissioner was because she “wanted to make sure adults took their fair share of the blame”.

She said: “What struck me was we always saw young people blamed for alcohol, but young people learn from adults around them and their parents.”

Siobhan Graham, 18, from Peebles, said: “We’ve turned the whole thing on its head and now it’s young people talking to adults about alcohol.”

She said youngsters drink because “they never have anything to do”.

The commission wants to see more activities for young people and adults, and for incentive schemes offering iTunes vouchers and discounts to be established. It also calls for tougher action on adults who buy alcohol for children, or shopkeepers who sell it to them.

When asked why this report may succeed where other studies have failed in turning recommendations on alcohol into reality, pharmacy student Ryan Leitch, 22, from Glasgow said: “The Scottish Government asked for this commission to be set up, we aren’t here to antagonise one group against another like you would find in a political party, and it’s evidence-based, so it’s not biased in one direction or the other.”

Asked if the group was representative enough, Professor Gerard Hastings, director of Stirling University’s Institute for Social Marketing, said: “You can pick holes in any consultation, and yes the commission could have been broader based and it could have included more people, but this is a real breath of fresh air and goes beyond the ticking of boxes and we should celebrate that.”

Despite a largely positive reaction from professionals working with young people, there were concerns about the practicalities of the recommendations.

Tam Penman, head of youth services at Liber8 Lanarkshire, an alcohol and substance misuse service, has spent the last 28 years working in this field.

The question he always asks when reports of this nature are published is: “What difference will this make to the young person on the streets, in the parks or in the woods who are affected by alcohol? It’s a fantastic piece of work for young people to get involved in, but where it will meet the needs of the young people we work with is difficult to say.”

He said Scotland was “on a threshold of disaster” because alcohol has never been so affordable or so available.

Jack Law, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, welcomed many of the report’s recommendations but was disappointed that there was no mention of minimum pricing – something the organisation has been campaigning strongly for in recent months.

Mr Law said the call for a total ban on advertising would be thought “radical” by some, but that tougher action on the alcohol industry was needed.

Paul Waterson, the chief executive of the Scottish Licensed Trade Association, was surprised that young people had put forward such strict sanctions.

“I think when people read these recommendations they will be quite surprised that it comes from a Youth Commission – they’re fairly radical.”

But he said some ideas in the report were unrealistic: “T in the Park has been over the years a very good event and I don’t see why people should stop drinking for a day as long as they are drinking responsibly. So I don’t think it’s realistic, but it’s still an interesting idea.”

The daughter of an alcoholic: ‘I had to do all the cooking when I was nine’

Children’s lives in Scotland are blighted by alcohol, not least those who have to live with an alcoholic parent. Hannah, 12, from Angus was taken into care after her three younger siblings were found living in squalid conditions because her alcoholic mother couldn’t look after them.

When she was nine-years-old Hannah was helped by Barnardos Hopscotch project, which has a volunteer befriender and mentoring service, before being taken into foster care two years ago.

There are thought to be 65,000 children in Scotland affected by parental alcohol abuse – Hannah’s story is just one.

‘I started coming to Barnardos because of my mum. My mum used to take this powder stuff and blue WKD [an alco-pop] all the time. I didn’t know what it was at first but now I know it was alcohol. Mum changed when she drank, she wasn’t speaking properly, she acted like a baby in front of my friends and it was really embarrassing. She came to school drunk once and when she was at home she wouldn’t get up, she’d just lie on the couch.

“When I was living with my mum she would lock the door all the time so we couldn’t get out. Sometimes we’d jump out the window to go out and play.

“I was the oldest so I had to look after the others. When I was about nine I had to do all the cooking and get my sister ready for school.

“When I was with [Barnardos befriender] Claire we used to go to McDonald’s and I’d pile up my Happy box with food and take it home to my sisters.”

The Barnardos befriending service visited Hannah’s house and began raising concerns with social services about her living conditions. There was no food in the house and the children slept on mattresses on the floor. Barnardos gave the children toys and clothing, but a week later when social workers visited all the toys and clothes had gone – presumed sold by their mother to fund her drinking. Soon after the children were removed.

“I have only seen mum once since I came to foster care,” says Hannah. “I don’t want contact with her – she lets me down. In my new foster home no-one gets drunk. My foster carer will have a drink, and I don’t mind that, but if she got drunk that would be horrible. It would be like mum again. When I’m older I don’t want to drink at all.

“I think people need to know what it’s like for children.”

Names have been changed

The teenage drinker: ‘One night my pal was murdered’

The voices of children affected by alcohol are rarely heard. The Sunday Herald spoke to 18-year-old Eddie Menzies from Hillhouse, South Lanarkshire. He was once what the public would have viewed as a Buckie-drinking yob, getting into fights and causing mayhem in the community, but through a local charity, Liber8, he has now found a path out of alcohol abuse and violence.

‘I had my first drink when I was about 10. I was 12 when I was drinking regularly out on the street. I’d be jumping about causing mayhem. How much I drank depended on what day it was. On a Friday I’d drink two bottles of Buckfast wine and half a bottle of vodka. I used to drink Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On a Thursday I’d only drink one bottle of Buckfast because I had school the next day. I was still able to go to school and I sat my Standard Grades and I passed them, but I didn’t get the grades I wanted.

“I would get money from my mum because I’d tell her I needed money for clothes, but she never saw any new clothes.

“I was about 14 when one night two people from Liber8 came up to me. I thought they were idiots trying to get us to stop drinking.

“But then one night, when I was 15, I was out drinking and my pal got murdered – he got stabbed. I was fighting myself just for something to do but him dying made me cut down a lot.

“I started volunteering for Liber8 and now I sometimes go out on the streets and talk to kids, and on a Wednesday I’ll do football with them.

“I think if you give them something to do, other than stand about in the streets they’ll do it. You can find stuff on for seven to 12-year-olds but nothing for teenagers, and they’re the ones who are going to be out drinking and they’re the ones who get into fights on the street.”