The truth about under-age drinking

This time it’s so blatant even the Daily Mail couldn’t distort the truth: the number of school-age children drinking alcohol has fallen to the lowest level since records began. 

The decline has been long, steady and consistent. In recent years, when the figures have been released most media coverage has stated the percentage of school children who admit to having drunk alcohol – 39% according to the latest study – with headlines like “four in ten children boozing! Mass epidemic!” while deliberately avoiding telling you that this figure was, say, 61% in 2003 for example. The liars at Alcohol Concern would resort to using older data to artificially inflate the problem when more recent, freely available data showed the numbers were in sustained decline. The deliberate obfuscation around the issue even led to supposedly reputable newspapers writing headlines claiming that under age drinking was ‘soaring’ when they very data they were reporting on showed it was in fact falling, not rising.

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