Kerre McIvor: Child becomes face of widespread drink problem

Talkback lines were jammed this week with people blaming the family, the anti-smacking bill, the lax booze laws and the Government.

Oh the shame of reading the Daily Mail online and seeing two stories from New Zealand featuring prominently. One was the "poo" cake made by an aggrieved cake-maker and sent to the customer with whom she was having a stoush.

The other was the video of a young Hamilton boy, filmed at the Fairfield skate park, completely off his chops on RTDs. The video went viral after an 18-year-old at the park put the footage on YouTube to raise awareness, he says, of what's happening to young kids today.

To be fair, the teenager phoned police, concerned about the boy's welfare. He didn't just post the footage for fun.

However, police say the video revictimises the boy. They are now on the hunt for the people who supplied the 9-year-old with alcohol, and he has been grounded.

Talkback lines were jammed this week with people blaming (in no particular order), the family, the anti-smacking bill, the lax booze laws and the Government.

The child became the face of the legions of underage drinkers that A&E doctors, St John Ambulance drivers and police have been telling us about for years. The poor little tyke will have learned a very public lesson about alcohol abuse.

Apart from the people who thought it was okay to give a 9-year-old spirits, it's the RTD manufacturers for whom I have the most contempt. They load the drinks with sugar to mask the taste of the alcohol, a taste that most kids find unpalatable. They market the drinks using bright colours and trendy advertising, then sit back and watch the money roll in.

Alac has found that 43 per cent of drinkers aged 12 to 17 consumed RTDs on their last drinking occasion and 47 per cent of female secondary students say RTDs are their drink of choice. The RTD industry's cynical drug-pushing seems to be working.

I hope the police are able to track down whoever supplied this child with the drink and fine them under the new liquor laws. In the meantime, it's sobering to have it sheeted home that every statistic in the underage drinking percentile has a name - and a face.

Drunk boy a disgrace for us all, Editorial, p24