Trollied Tuesday: Grown Up Drinking

Raise a glass, if you will, to Bath University for its conclusion that infantilising people with regards to alcohol is a waste of time.

Shock adverts used by the government to highlight the dangers of excess drinking have little effect on young people, a new study says.

Policy makers should accept that young people sometimes go out to get drunk and will exceed guidelines on daily alcohol intake, say researchers at the University of Bath.

That it takes a two-year study to point out what should be obvious to everyone show just how divorced from reality the puritans are.

What was even more noteworthy, however, was that the media outlets which reported this rare example of common sense did not generally stop to ask whether trite, hysterical stories about binge-drinking might also be counterproductive.

I suppose there will be some Daily Mail and Guardian readers who enjoy piously tut-tutting about the moral failings of others, but in general I doubt that this type of stuff puts on sales. Journalists know people like a drink (often from personal experience) and they don't all turn into cirrhosis-ridden, pyschopathic yobs as a consequence. As do most of the people who buy newspapers. So if the nation's editors could stop treating their readers like idiots, that would be a start.

If they were to assume that their readers would rather have stories about beer that is specially designed for dogs so you can plastered with your pet (actually, dogs will drink normal beer given half the chance, they love it) or stories with headlines like 'Aussie straps in beer, not child', then things would be better still.

UPDATE: Quink in the comments has something even better. Japanese beer for kids.