Letter: Children hooked on alcopops

Children hooked on alcopops

Sir: Having spent the last six months researching the impact of alcopops on the drinking habitats of children we must take issue with your leading article of 20 May.

As we revealed in our Channel 4 documentary on 15 May, there can be no doubt that very young children, thousands of whom end up unconscious through drink in hospital casualty departments every year, are easily influenced recipients of the alcopop marketing message.

It is complacent in the extreme to argue that "a product engineered to look and taste like carbonated sweet drinks does nothing, in itself, to predispose children to defy their parents or abandon their own sense of right". Alcopops are drunk regularly by children as young as eight or nine. How well developed is their "sense of right"?

These drinks are marketed with imagery familiar to young children. Alcopops are advertised on television during the late afternoon/early evening, breaking the drinks industry's self-imposed ban.

Alcopops are a cynical attempt by the drinks industry to mask the bitterness of alcohol and get kids hooked young. They must go.

RHONDA EVANS

HARVEY WOOLFE

Evans Woolfe Ltd

Twickenham, Middlesex