A trend towards binge-drinking among French teenagers could be curbed if schools taught children the health benefits of drinking French wine, according to a parliamentary report which has stirred the ire of the Government.

The suggestion, from MPs who represent constituencies in Burgundy and Champagne, raised a storm after a push this week by health experts and officials to break France’s reluctance to see alcohol as dangerous. Drink causes the premature deaths of more than 45,000 French people a year, far more than the European average.

While French alcohol consumption has dropped continuously since the 1970s, concern is growing over adolescents who have adopted “le binge-drinking” as the British style of excess is called. The young, including a rising number of girls, have turned against wine, preferring spirits and alcopops.

The report for the Parliamentary Economics Committee, drafted by Philippe Martin and Gérard Voisin, members of President Chirac’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), said that the young were forgoing wine’s “health benefits and tasting pleasure” with a desire for higher alcohol content. “To be French is to know wine,” said the report. “Learning about healthy living starts from childhood and primary school.”

Mr Martin said that the MPs were “not suggesting that baby bottles be filled with wine.” The aim was to steer young people “toward a moderate consumption of our quality wines.” The proposals, part of a plan for reviving the French wine industry, drew an angry response from Xavier Bertrand, the Health Minister. He said with sarcasm: “Some people are telling me that it could have been worse. They did not call for cans of beer and wine in the school canteen.”

“If we are going to work on the young, the problem is the new phenomenon of extreme drinking,” said Mr Bertrand. “We have to break the link between festivity and alcohol.” Mr Bertrand’s words went to the core of the state’s dilemma as it tries to change ancient French attitudes towards wine and other drinks while appeasing an industry that is part of the national heritage and a key sector of the economy.

Most experts disagreed with the parliamentarians’ idea that youngsters would drink less if they learnt le savoir boire (the art of drinking) or the wine customs of their ancestors. Guy Caro, a doctor specialising in alcoholism, said that it was a fraud to compare wine to other products in France’s culinary heritage. “Wine has nothing to do with camembert. Camembert does not contain alcohol. Alcohol is a danger to health. Camembert is not,” he told Sud-Ouest, a wine-region newspaper.

Vie Libre, an association of reformed alcoholics, said that it was shocked. “There can be no question of inciting minors to consume a product to which 10 per cent of adults have an addictive relationship.”

Experts reported this week that the trend to teenage bingeing was greatest among the children of prosperous families. On the day that le Beaujolais nouveau arrived last month, one private boarding school in Paris breathalysed all pupils after lunch. Those drunk were suspended for a week, Le Point magazine reported yesterday.

“It is a sign of changing times, that families no longer fill the wine-glasses of 15-year-olds at Sunday lunch, but the teenager is far more likely to go out and get smashed,” said an expert.

Big consumers

Source: French Government, French Observatory for Drugs and Addiction, Le Point magazine

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