Labour's Alcopops Addicts

Take a good look at the picture below comparing a normal liver with one destroyed by cirrhosis and then read the latest figures from the British Liver Trust on how serious our under-age drinking problem has become in the last five years:

Between 2001 and 2006 unit consumption for 11-13 year olds who drank alcohol had risen by nearly one hundred percent from 5.6 units to 10.1 units in a one week period.

A report published today by The Information Centre highlights the need for a change in behaviour from young people with one in five pupils aged 11-15 years admitting to being drunk in the last four weeks of the study and around a third of these pupils had deliberately tried to get drunk.

This follows news earlier in the year that the number of hospital admissions involving teenagers with alcohol-related diseases caused by "acute intoxication" has almost doubled over the past four years, including three children under the age of 18 who were treated for alcohol-related liver cirrhosis, a disease that usually takes five to ten years of heavy drinking to develop.

So much for Labour's approach to alcohol...