Public health: drinking of alcohol by children and adolescents. Recommendation

PURPOSE : to present a proposal for a Council Recommendation on the drinking of alcohol by children and adolescents. CONTENT : the proposed Council recommendation clearly sets out what Member States should do in order to formulate strategies and take actions to address the problems in their countries due to the inappropriate consumption of alcohol by children and adolescents. Firstly, Member States must strengthen efforts to develop and implement appropriate comprehensive health promotion policies targeted at children, adolescents and their parents, teachers and carers at local, national and European level. Member States must also: - strengthen and support efforts to develop and implement health promotion programmes in schools, to appropriately include the alcohol issue, taking into account existing experiences, for instance the concept of health promotion in schools; - support measures to raise awareness of the effects of alcoholic drinking, in particular on children and adolescents; - encourage youth organisations, sports organisations and other local community initiatives to include and integrate health education in relation to alcohol within their programmes of activitiy; - encourage the producers of alcohol beverages in their efforts to develop specific training for servers and sales persons with regard to the protection of children and adolescents; - encourage the production of advisory materials for parents to help them discuss alcohol issues with their children; - further develop initiatives addressed to the young people on the dangers of drink-driving; - take strict enforcement action as a matter of priority against the sale of alcohol to underage customers; - foster a multi-sector approach, to educating young people about the use and abuse of alcohol; - produce and disseminate and use evidence based information on the factors which motivate children to start drinking at a worrying level; - support the development of specific approaches on early detection and brief interventions concerning young people being alcohol dependent. With regard to good codes of conduct, the Member States should: - strengthen the enforcement of regulatory control with regard to the promotion, marketing and retailing of alcoholic beverages; - seek the agreement of manufacturers and retailers to apply the same high level of responsibility and standards with respect to marketing and promotion and retailing in Member States; - establish cooperation with producers and retailers of alcoholic beverages; - ensure that alcoholic beverages are not designed or promoted to appeal to children or adolescents; - create a system for ensuring the removal of products, which offend a code of conduct, from sale, and the cessation of inappropriate marketing or promotional practices.�