SCOTTISH teenage girls are the heaviest drinking in the world, according to an international study which reveals that, by the age of 15, more than a third are drinking spirits at least once a week.

English girls and boys drink more spirits than their peers in any of the 35 countries surveyed, up to the age of 15. At that stage girls are marginally eclipsed by Scots and boys by Maltese.

Scottish girls are also the youngest in the world to get drunk for the first time. By the age of 13 more girls than boys are drinking spirits on a regular basis.

The study was based on interviews with 160,000 youngsters by the World Health organisation (WHO).

Rising alcohol abuse has been blamed for a surge in violent behaviour among teenagers. Heavier drinking among young women is said to have been influenced by the growth of “ladette” culture — typified by the antics of celebrities such as Ms Dynamite, the singer who was fined £500 and ordered to pay £750 in compensation last week after she slapped a policewoman during a drunken night out.

Dr Holger Schmid, the author of the report and vice-director of the Lausanne-based Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug Problems, said it confirmed that Britain has a serious problem, compounded by a binge-drinking culture and alcohol advertising in sport.

“These figures are serious and send a clear message that action is needed,” he said. “What we see in southern European wine-drinking countries is more frequent but more moderate drinking at meal time. This is quite different from this culture of drinking as much as you can.”

British teenagers do not top the international league table for wine and beer drinking, although their consumption is nevertheless higher than the international average. However Schmid said spirit consumption was regarded as the benchmark of alcohol abuse.

He added that the British government needed to present a more consistent alcohol policy.

“It is not consistent to restrict access to alcohol on the one hand while allowing alcohol advertising in sports and pictures that glamorise drinking in magazines. I would advocate a ban (on alcohol advertising) in sport,” said Schmid.

The Scottish executive is addressing the problem by teaching primary school- children how to drink safely. The programme will teach Primary 6 and 7 pupils about different types of alcohol, the risks of drinking excessively and how to drink sensibly.

The scheme has sparked anger from parent groups who fear that it may encourage some children to take up drinking alcohol at an earlier age.

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “The use of alcohol should not be introduced to primary school children at all. It would only encourage a lot of youngsters who would not normally have thought of experimenting with alcohol.”

In France, where alcohol advertising in sport and on television is banned, drinking levels and deaths from liver disease have fallen by half over the past 50 years. Only 11% of 15-year-old girls drink alcohol every week.

The study revealed that, at the age of 11, 6% of boys and 5% of girls in England drink spirits at least once a week, rising to 16% of boys and 18% of girls at 13.

By the time they are 15 years old, 29% of English boys and 36% of English girls drink spirits at least once a week — compared with 26% and 37% in Scotland, 8% and 5% in France, 14% and 7% in America and 8% of both sexes in Ireland.

Scottish and Austrian girls are the youngest in the world to get drunk for the first time, at 13yrs 5mths, a month earlier than English girls. Scottish boys get drunk for the first time at 13yrs and 6mths, a month later than English boys and eight months later than American boys who top the world league.

Despite emerging as the happiest country in the world in a recent life satisfaction poll, more 15-year-old boys in Malta are regular drinkers of spirits than in any other country.

Almost 30% of English 13-year-olds admit being drunk more than once and 10% of 11-year-old boys. In America the figure was 7% of 13-year-olds and 1.5% of 11-year-olds. A fifth of 13-year-olds and 6% of 11-year-old boys in Scotland had been drunk more than once.

Dr Jonathan Chick, a consultant psychiatrist with Lothian NHS alcohol problems service, backed calls for a ban on alcohol advertising in sport and urged parents to do more to prevent problem drinking. “Some of these children who are binge drinking in their teenage years will be seen 10 years from now with an alcohol dependence problem,” he said.

“Legislation on underage drinking has to be more strictly enforced and parents have to lay down rules to their children about drinking and coming home in an intoxicated state.”

Don Shenker, the head of policy at Alcohol Concern, called on the government to launch a public health campaign on safer drinking aimed at young people and to establish specialist treatment centres for teenagers.

• Hospital admissions due to smoking and alcohol abuse have soared by up to 500% in Scotland in the past five years, according to official figures.

  The number of Scots admitted to hospital with mental health problems caused by tobacco — including depression and schizophrenia — has risen 513% from 799 to 4,904 since 2000.

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