Growing trend for teenage drunkenness concerns doctors and educationalists
From Hugh Schofield in Paris

FRENCH doctors have issued a warning about a growing culture of alcohol abuse among teenagers, amid fears that the country could fall foul of the same passion for binge drinking that has hit the UK.

According to official figures released last week, a double change is at work. On the one hand, regular low-level consumption of alcohol among 18 to 25-year-olds appears to be on the decrease - the result of price rises and government health campaigns.

But on the other hand, there is a clear trend towards deliberate intoxication - with young people choosing to lose themselves in occasional bouts of drunkenness.

"For adolescents these days it is all about getting smashed. Obviously we are still far behind Great Britain, but it is spreading fast and among all sectors of society," said Dr Philippe Batel, an alcohol specialist at Beaujon hospital in Paris.

According to Etienne Apaire, of the Ministerial Committee for Fighting Drugs and Addictions: "Parties are being taken over by a culture of getting totally out of it', which often leads to disaster and poses real problems for health and society."

The ultra-respectable Le Monde newspaper led with the story on its front page last Wednesday, reflecting the gravity of what is seen as an alarming new phenomenon in French society.

"The rate of drunkenness among 17-year-olds experienced a very clear rise between 2003 and 2005," it stated, quoting a report by the Institute for Health Monitoring.

In the institute's latest findings, 50% of 17-year-olds had been drunk at least once in the last year, and 10% at least 10 times - well behind Britain, maybe, but still a big rise for France.

"More studies are needed to show if this marks a change in the drinking habits of young people, which would seem to be getting closer to those of their northern European neighbours," the report said.

For generations, France's approach to alcohol has been held up as an example of "responsible" drinking, where children are gradually introduced to the pleasures of alcohol via the glass of watered-down wine at the family table, and learn how to consume in moderation.

But according to Le Parisien newspaper, which also carried a front-page item on the problem: "Imitating the binge-drinking phenomenon in Great Britain, French adolescents are starting to drink younger and younger and putting their very lives in danger."

The alarm was first raised four weeks ago after an incident in the northern town of Abbeville, in which two 16-year-old girls were found comatose in their school toilets at nine o'clock in the morning.

The teenagers had skipped breakfast to celebrate a birthday with friends at an Irish bar next to the lycée, where they had each ordered four cherry- flavoured vodkas, and finished off a shop-bought bottle of vodka.

The pair were taken to hospital, and the bar's owner placed under investigation for serving alcohol to minors. Just three days later emergency services were called again to help two other drunk pupils at the same school.

Universities are increasingly aware of the tendency towards "la biture express" (fast-track inebriation), and earlier this month the Conference des Grandes Ecoles - the elite institutions of higher education - signed a charter with students to reduce the temptations.

Under this, college bars will only serve alcohol on weekends in return for pre-bought tickets, soft drinks will be offered free, alcohol testers will be available and first-aiders on hand.

In university towns such as Rennes in Brittany, public drunkenness is increasingly a problem - to the point where the authorities have even started buying up bars in order to close them down.

"We wanted to reduce the concentration of bars in the city centre as part of a general policy to reduce excessive drinking in Rennes," said Honore Puil, the city councillor charged with tackling binge drinking.

The reasons behind the shift are complex. French youngsters face the same pressures of society that prevail elsewhere in Europe, where the fashion for binge drinking appears to be gradually spreading southwards across borders.

However, the idea of "responsible" drinking in France has always been something of a myth, as witnessed by the - until recently - huge death rate on the roads.

According to Frederique Gardien, educationalist and author of Teenage Alcoholism - Time To Face The Facts, modern-day French teenagers are "no more vulnerable today than they used to be to the dangers of alcoholism".

"What's different is that society has changed," he said. "Parents today are surrounded by all this psychoanalysis. When they want to say no to their child, it all has to be explained and negotiated.

"The child is suddenly expected to be able to understand what is good for him or herself. No-one is setting down the limits which they need for a sense of security. So instead, they test their own limits by seeing what happens when they do the deed."