Booze sorry now for licence to be legless?

Byline: Sue Carroll

YOU know you must be getting on when you walk into a pub and no one offers you a free drink. Not even the barman.

Until the government proposed a ban on drinking establishments handing out free bottles of wine to female customers, I had no idea such practice was commonplace.

Maybe I need to get out more.

But since I hate the idea of nonsmoking and standing-roomonly bars throbbing with music, even I can't be enticed by a Sex On The Beach at bargain basement happy hour prices.

These establishments are the province of young and mainly inexperienced drinkers who have no idea of their capacity or the consequences of mixing vats of cheap toxic wine with vodka.

But, like a bad hangover, it's now dawned on the Department of Health that one of the reasons we've got vomit and violence on our streets might be something to do with liberal licensing laws. D'oh!

I trust they realise that it's also 24-hour drinking - not just thirsty ladettes - that create drink-all you-can bar wars, free booze and bingeing. Rather like bankers, the drinks industry has been allowed to run amok in a bid for a fast buck.

We were promised all-day consumption would lead to continental cafe culture - but what we've got is speed-drinking, crime and A&E units packed with comatose kids.

Home Office plans to crack down on happy hours, free booze and drinking games in bars are well meant but too little and possibly too late for some livers.

And I'm not even sure making alcohol less accessible or even more expensive will do the trick when our drinking culture is so ingrained grown women like Carol Jones believe that what schoolgirls on a charity walk need in the way of sustenance is vodka, wine and alcopops.

God knows what possessed her to shove one bottle of vodka, three of wine and two alcopops into their rucksacks.

Perhaps she was half-cut or thought playing "naughty" would win her street cred.

But the inevitable result was that the girls returned home paralytic and have since been suspended from Maltravers School in Wiltshire.

Carol is facing a police investigation.

A charge of supplying alcohol to minors carries a maximum fine of pounds 5,000.

But when do we ever hear of this law being implemented - whether it involves parents dishing out booze or a cornershop abusing licensing laws? And shouldn't the parents of the legless kids we see sprawled in gutters be made to face charges?

Just last week, in my leafy neck of the woods, a neighbour chased a gang of children, some younger than 12, out of her road.

They left behind several empty cans of strong head-blowing lager.

This, our local police wearily informed us, is par for the course.

Meanwhile, in restaurants, those of us who drink sensibly will be reminded - courtesy of glasses marked with a measure - that too much alcohol can be dangerous. They're preaching to the converted.

The real trouble comes with kids stoked up on supermarket lager at 10p a can, drinking themselves silly till dawn, and the feckless parents who let them.

The problem in this case isn't that nanny doesn't know best.

It's just that the same nanny advocated 24-hour boozing.

Until she calls time on that everything else is a half-measure.

We didn't get cafe culture .. we got speed drinking