A brew to get bothered about?

Labour is upset about alcoholic 'soft' drinks. But is this a matter for politicians? Paul Vallely reports

William Hooper, in addition to being the inventor of the hot-water bottle, was famous in the 1840s for his lemonade. Which was why Bass breweries acquired his name as the trademark for their Hooper's Hooch, which has taken British pubs, bars and supermarkets by storm in the past nine months.

There is, however, nothing traditional about the product, an emetic mixture of lemonade and alcohol which has since spawned some 23 other brands of alcoholic "soft" drinks from manufacturers anxious to emulate the brewer's success. The Hooch is selling two million bottles a week.

Two Dogs, Mad MacAulay's, Lemon Lips, and a dozen other lemonades - with alcohol content ranging from 4.2 per cent to 5.5 per cent - are being joined by cherryades, ginger beers and various colas in what is known in the drinks trade as "new age adult beverages".

But products such as Alcola - which has been launched by the family that introduced Babycham in the Fifties and is marketed under the slogan The Cola That Bites Back - yesterday prompted Labour's consumer spokesperson Nigel Griffiths to demand an investigation by advertising authorities and the Office of Fair Trading. He fears that the new style of drinks will cause an explosion in drinking among young teenagers who cannot tell the difference between the Caribbean crush Lilt and its less innocent equivalent Tilt, which contains 5.5 per cent alcohol - more than most extra-strong lagers.

The marketing strategies of the new drinks, which rely heavily on cartoons and rave culture slogans, have led Alcohol Concern, the anti-drinks lobbying group, to condemn manufacturers for a "cynical attempt to hook young people on alcohol". Brewers dismiss the idea that they are targeting under-age drinkers as fanciful.

Muddled messages over alcohol are nothing new. The Association of Chief Police Officers yesterday released figures showing that fewer people were caught drinking and driving over Christmas. No one was saying whether it might have been even better had not Stephen Dorrell appeared to trump the campaign a week after it opened with his announcement that official guidelines on the level of safe drinking were to be relaxed.

In making that announcement the health secretary was anxious to indicate that the grip of the "nanny state" was receding, which is presumably also why the Government has recently changed the law to allow spirit advertising on TV. There is a logic to this. Why should there be government guidelines on safe drinking at all? There are no guidelines on cholesterol or other medical indicators. Such matters are left to a private dialogue between doctor and patient.

How far should the power of the state extend? The argument between liberty and authority is well-rehearsed. Yes, after Locke, we do hand over power to the state - we give it authority to license pharmaceutical products because most of us do not have the expertise to make a judgement on what is safe. But no, after JS Mill, we do not accept that the state should much intervene over what we do to ourselves, but only where we threaten to harm others. Banning lemon hooch on grounds of oenological inelegance seems hardly to qualify.

But suddenly the children are involved and paternalism must give way to parenting. According to Philip Graham, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute of Child Health and chairman of a distinguished working party on young people and alcohol, children's alcohol consumption is at a "worryingly high level". One in five British 15-year-olds drinks more than the (old) safe limit for adults every week. And 12 per cent of nine- to 15-year-olds are regular drinkers - with an average 6.9 units a week, compared with 6.7 in France and 5.1 in Spain.

The new drinks were yesterday condemned as "insidious" by Professor Sir Leslie Turnberg, president of the Royal College of Physicians. And the 4,000 members of the Scottish Licensed Traders' Association are refusing to stock the trendy brew.

The manufacturers are bullish in their response. There have always been kids' drinks. Remember Prince Charles' infamous under-age cherry brandy? Or the rise and fall of that "genuine champagne perry" Babycham, with its cute little Bambi? Or the brown ale & blackcurrant of the Seventies and the trendy sweet ciders of the Eighties? The young have always found ways of disguising the flavour of alcohol in the early stages of acquiring a taste for the stuff.

But three things are different here. First, the new brews do not merely disguise the alcohol, they mask it completely so that it becomes instantly palatable to a generation reared on Coke and Pepsi. Bass has admitted that the alcohol in its Hooch is difficult to taste.

Second, alcoholic lemonade is not a classic tipple masked with something sweet; putting alcohol into what has been an innocent drink of childhood somehow inverts natural order. And third, there is the packaging. The new drinks do not come in the conventional containers of lager, wine or spirits. Their cans are the same size as soft drinks. Some come in unorthodox shapes - a light bulb bottle with a screw top or a rocket-shaped container which one drink reviewer claimed was "aimed at kids who want to sneak drinks into dance halls". Their advertising features zany cartoon characters and many have names which appeal to teenagers' anti-authoritarian streak.

The law is clear on the marketing of alcohol. Adverts "should not be directed at people under 18 through the selection of media, style of presentation, content or context in which they appear", according to the Advertising Standards Authority code. Manufacturers say they are aiming the new drinks at young women in their twenties, though they have found a big market among young men of the same age (City traders drink them with double vodka chasers). If the advertising style which is used to attract these customers also appeals to teenage drinkers that is unfortunate but there are licensing laws to prevent sales to those under 18. All we need is for that law to be properly policed.

Such an argument is disingenuous. Rules banning the sale of alcohol to the young are commonly flouted and offenders are rarely prosecuted, according to the Magistrates Association. The culture of aspiration among teenagers is a marketing truism. And nothing is more likely to appeal to a youth market than being told a product is potentially harmful. The manufacturers may be acting within the letter of the law but could their marketing be described as responsible?

An official investigation might provide the answer. What has the industry got to lose by co-operating? If their hooch is being drunk by the right people they have nothing to fear.