British teens among Europe's heaviest drinkers, drug-users
Pakistan Times Monitoring Report

LONDON (UK): Teenagers in Britain are among the heaviest drinkers and drug-users in Europe, with binge drinking particularly serious among girls, says a study made public Tuesday.

Twenty-nine percent of girls and 26 percent of boys in Britain admitted to binge drinking at least three times in the month prior to the survey, said the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD).

Twenty-three percent of boys and 16 percent of girls, meanwhile said they had used cannabis, also in the month prior to the survey being conducted.

A similar study in 1999 showed that 33 percent of boys and 27 percent of girls admitted to having more than five drinks in one sitting, which is considered as binge drinking.

Of the pubs

Martin Plant, the author of the research, said urgent action was needed to combat alcohol use in teenagers and that "feckless and irresponsible" drinking promotions in pubs should be banned.

"The ladette culture has lost its stigma and women are quite happy to go out in groups and drink together," he said.

"A vast majority of the students in the United Kingdom had been drinking alcohol during the last 12 months (91 percent)," according to the ESPAD website, well above the 83 percent European average.

A total of 35 countries were surveyed for the latest report, with 2000 youngsters between the ages of 15 and 16 interviewed in Britain alone.

Caroline Flint Reax

Commenting on the report, Home Office minister Caroline Flint said that "the government is determined to protect young people, but also to send a strong message that drugs and alcohol misuse will not be tolerated."

"We are working with industry and have brought in tough new powers, such as on-the-spot fines for selling drink to under-18s," she said.

The minister stressed the importance of drug and alcohol education policies in schools while highlighting the fact that most teenagers had not been tempted into trying drugs.

"Although it is worrying to see relatively high levels of cannabis use by British schoolchildren compared to other European countries, this report shows that the vast majority of children do not take drugs," she said.

The survey found that 42 percent of boys and 35 percent of girls had tried illegal drugs at least once in their lives, with one in ten admitting to using non-cannabis derivatives.●