BREWERS FREED TO MIND THEIR OWN ALCOPOP BUSINESS

The Government has abandoned plans to impose statutory control on the sale
of alcopops. In what anti-alcohol campaigners see as capitulation to big
brewers, the Home Office is set to allow them self-regulation.

Lee Lizenberg of Alcohol Concern reacted with horror to the plan yesterday,
which he considers a major climbdown. "The Home Office has given in to big
business. It is allowing the people who produce alcopops to police the
system - the people responsible for the problem in the first place."

Alcopops were introduced in the summer of 1995. Most have an alcohol
content of 5 per cent, the equivalent of a bottle of strong lager, but this
is disguised by their sweet taste.

Critics maintain that alcopops target young or under-age drinkers, a charge
strongly denied. During 1995-96, sales tripled and market analysts believe
they will double again by 2000.

Last year Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, and Frank Dobson, the Health
Secretary, threatened tough action on alcopops. But at a meeting early last
week with the drink trade's own watchdog the Portman Group, George Howarth,
the Home Office Minister who chairs the ministerial group on under-age
drinking, said: "I warmly welcome the positive message and positive results
of the revised code (the drinks industry's own). Ministers will be looking
at the success of the code and wider initiatives."

Under the code, brewers must not use labelling that "might be more likely
to appeal to under-18s than to adults through usage of cartoon characters,
artificially bright colours, or endorsement and promotion by personalities
predominantly popular with under-18s".

Nor must they "employ any association with violent, dangerous, illegal or
anti-social behaviour, any allusion to illicit drugs and any suggestion of
sexual success or prowess".

Latest figures from the National Statistics Office show that, although
there has been no increase during the 1990s in the proportion of 11-15
year-olds drinking, those who do drink are consuming much more. But
Ministers are understood to accept that there is little evidence that
children would abstain from alcohol were it not for alcopops. They believe
alcopops are an additional option for children who would drink anyway.

Checked-by: Richard Lake