Scottish alcohol tagging scheme goes live

By Jim Reed
Newsbeat reporter

Shops in parts of Dundee have started tagging bottles of alcohol as part of a police plan to cut underage drinking levels.

Supermarkets and off-licences have been asked to mark bottles with an invisible code.

If young drinkers are found with a tagged item, police say they can work out when and where it was purchased.

They claim the idea is to target adults who agree to buy cheap alcohol for under-18s.

Constable Andy Davie from Tayside Police said: "The biggest problem we have isn't shops selling alcohol directly to young customers, it's people buying it on their behalf."

How does the scheme work?

Shops have been asked to mark bottles and cans with an ultraviolet code invisible to the naked eye.

If police find the drink on someone under 18 they can read the code using an electronic device.

Officers can then work out when and where the alcohol was bought.

If a high number of bottles are coming from a specific shop, police say they will either send in plain clothes officers or search CCTV footage to identify the adults buying it.

Police say anyone caught will be prosecuted.

The maximum sentence is a £5,000 fine and three months in prison, although a warning is much more likely.

Why are police so worried about it?

They claim underage drinking is often linked to crime and other anti-social behaviour.

Andy Davie said: "Most young drinkers are decent people but under the influence of alcohol everybody does things they wouldn't normally do."

There are also health worries.

Last year the local hospital in Dundee treated 388 under-18s for alcohol related problems.

What about the shops themselves?

Scotland already has some of the toughest restrictions on selling alcohol directly to under-18s.

Plans to raise the age for buying alcohol in a supermarket from 18 to 21 were narrowly rejected in the Scottish parliament last year.

But from October 2011 it will be against the law to serve anyone who looks under 25 without asking for ID.

Shop workers can be fined and in extreme cases sent to prison if they deliberately ignore the rules.

The bottle marking scheme in Dundee is voluntary at the moment so shops do not have to take part.

But some politicians are now pushing to make the idea mandatory across Scotland.

Are people drinking more before their 18th birthday?

As usual it depends what statistics you look at.

We do know that people of all ages are drinking more than they were 20 years ago.

A report from the World Health Organisation suggests one in four Scottish 15-year-olds get drunk regularly. The figures are about the same for England and slightly higher for Wales. Northern Ireland didn't take part in the study.

The most popular drink for lads is beer, followed by cider and alcopops.

For girls it's alcopops that come top then beer and wine.

A different report from the NHS in Scotland suggests 15-year-olds are consuming more and stronger alcohol with the average number of units going up from around 13 a week in 2000 to 18 a week by 2008.

There is some evidence this is leading to more health problems in younger drinkers.

A study by the charity Alcohol Concern published last year found the number of under-18s sent to hospital in England after drinking increased by around a third between 2002 and 2007.

What about the rest of the UK?

Bottle marking is the latest in a long line of ideas meant to crack down on underage drinking.

In England and Wales police have been handed more powers to confiscate bottles and cans. The fine for shops that repeatedly sell alcohol to under-18s has also been doubled to £20,000.

In Northern Ireland new powers brought in last year mean under-18s can be prosecuted and fined if they are caught with drink in a public place three times in a year.