UK children claim easy access to cigarettes, drink
Young people in Britain find it easy to get hold of cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs from ages as young as 12, health specialists said on Friday.
Most regular smokers aged 12-15 claim they buy cigarettes in shops, even though the legal minimum age is 16.
Around 80 percent of 15-year-olds say alcoholic drinks are very or fairly easy to obtain, usually through friends or relatives. By the age of 16 or 17, drinkers are usually buying alcohol for themselves, defying a legal minimum age of 18.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, experts in Scotland said their findings were based on reviews of several recent surveys of young people’s behaviour across Britain.
The report comes as Britain mulls a controversial relaxation of its drinking laws, which would allow pubs and bars to stay open later. The planned change has raised concerns that more drinking will mean more violence and disorder.
The Scottish researchers also found that young people had relatively easy access to illegal drugs.
Around 10-20 percent of youths aged 10-12 and two thirds of 15-year-olds say they have been offered banned drugs. Around 25 percent of 15-year-olds say cannabis can easily be bought at schools and at least 10 percent claim to have been offered heroin, cocaine or crack cocaine.
The researchers said increasing the cost of cigarettes and alcohol appeared to help curb underage Smoking and drinking.
In developed countries like Britain, for example, a 10 percent increase in the price of tobacco is associated with a four percent drop in demand, they said.
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