Get the kids back in the pub

I first drank in a pub aged 15 or 16, at which point I must have looked 14 at most. We thought we had 'em fooled, but of course we didn't - hence the humouring smiles from bartenders, and nightclub staff pretending to examine our homemade ID cards. Though the legal drinking age was 18, many landlords turned a blind eye and kept their doors partly ajar.

So it is with some bemusement that I have watched various British police forces cracking down on underage drinkers this summer, using methods normally reserved for smashing international heroin rings.

In Harlow, police have been asking members of the public to pass on underage drinking 'intelligence' anonymously to a special hotline. Officers across the country are sending out 15- and 16-year-old decoys, to test the resolution of off-licenses and pubs (one Leicestershire man who helped an undercover young person buy alcohol was threatened with prosecution and a £5,000 fine).

Others are swooping in evening raids on parks and recreation grounds where young people hang out (the Home Office calls these areas 'underage drinking hotspots'). Earlier in August, officers busted a dozen under-18s at a Blackpool nightclub, who apparently offered 'very convincing' excuses for their misfitting ID card photos, including  'I have had my hair cut', 'I have lost weight' and 'The photo was taken some years ago'.

The tacit tolerance of 16-18-year-old drinking has been replaced with a tacit intolerance of 18-21 drinking. For the past few years, supermarkets and pubs have exhibited 'Think 21' signs. Scotland has now raised this to a 'Think 25' policy.

Every few months somebody proposes reviewing the minimum drinking age, looking longingly at America's prohibitionary hangover of over-21. This probably won't happen. But, still, 18- to 21-year olds are increasingly subject to various forms of state chaperoning, with London and Scotland proposing to bar them from buying booze at supermarkets and off-licences. Last year, a think tank even suggested making 18-21s carry 'smart cards' to record their evening's drinks (it would be a criminal offence to serve them if they had consumed more than three units).

So, official puritanism clashes with public drinking mores. For most young people, drinking is an accepted part of social life, and they often start before 18. A Facebook group campaigning against the raising of the booze-buying age to 21 has attracted 15,000 members, incredulous at this attempt to "discriminate against a group with full legal rights". Indeed - how absurd
that adults who can vote, buy a house and have children, can't buy a can of lager at the corner shop.

How did a few young people with a few cans of Fosters become a crime issue of the summer? Police statements invoke disorderly youth running rampant in the streets - they see alcohol as fuel for 'anti-social behaviour' and a host of other ills.

No doubt some unruly youth are roaming the streets, but this is partly because they are now completely barred from pubs.

The truth is that pubs were great civilisers: it meant that you learnt to drink around adults, according to adult rules. You were there on special permission, so you didn't want to do anything stupid or make a fool of yourself. As a result, turning 18 wasn't a blast of fireworks with the overnight discovery of demon drink: by 18 you knew what to do.

Officials claim they want a French-style café-drinking culture, but they forget that in France young people drink earlier and more gradually, in a family or community context, as part of growing up and entering adult society. By contrast, in the United States, where they are barred from touching a drop till 21, they carry on like overgrown 16-year-olds through to their early twenties.

There is little the government can do about when teenagers start to experiment with alcohol. The question is where they do it, and on whose terms. Looking back, I cannot help but conclude that 'turning a blind eye' was a more civilised - and civilising - approach to the matter than the current summer crackdown. ·