MP targets vodka shot cocktails

An MP has claimed a new range of alcopop drinks are being marketed in a design aimed at glamourising teenage drinking.

Labour member for Northampton North Sally Keeble claims the 17% abv vodka-based Shotpaks are packaged in the same way as children's soft drinks.

She has complained to drinks watchdog the Portman Group about the £3-a-time range of sachet cocktails, which comprise Purple Hooter, Lemon Drop, Sour Apple and Kamikaze flavours.

Keeble says the internet advertising for Shotpak features pictures of scantily clad females and sends out a specific message to teenagers.

The brand is owned by an American company, but marketed by English distributors based in Keeble's Northampton constituency. The company says the drinks are half the strength of standard vodka cocktails and are too expensive to attract binge-drinking youngsters.

It says it intends to contest any complaint made to the Portman Group.

The Guv'nor John Ellis

Lib Dem leader needs a reality check

So, children are back in the news again and at the top of the political agenda for various politicians.

For the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, children should be criminalised more easily, especially if carrying knives. But for the leader of the Liberal Democrats, it seems that the age of criminal responsibility should be at least 18.

Nick Clegg believes that "criminalising underage drinkers and their parents is not the way to combat the problem", according to the Morning Advertiser the other week.

However, "the Liberal Democrats would change the law so that anyone caught selling alcohol to children will be fined and their licence revoked at the first offence," he says. "If we don't act now, we risk creating a generation which has permanently gone off the rails."

Come on Nick, get real! As any responsible parent will tell you, if kids don't get a sense of what is right or wrong then they are heading "off the rails".

We have so much sense put forward in this paper by fellow Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland, but if his leader believes that children are incapable of knowingly doing wrong, maybe someone should have a word in his ear well before the next election.

He's going the right way to lose the vote of every adult. Perhaps someone should tell him under 18s don't have a vote!