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