YORK has a drink problem. The city is well known for hosting a fun night out, but the latest Brewster Sessions report confirms that the pub crawl culture is out of control.

The figures show more drunkenness, more alcohol-fuelled disorder and more drink-driving.

From all the worrying trends disclosed by the report, two stand out: the frightening number of our children who are drunk and disorderly; and the shocking proportion of women in alcohol-related trouble.

Under-age drinking has always been with us. It is tempting to dismiss the situation with an avuncular chuckle and an airy belief that "they'll grow out of it". That would be to misread the seriousness of the situation.

Many of today's teenage drinkers have gone far beyond occasional clandestine cider sessions. More than 100 have been prosecuted for drunken behaviour. Magistrates are dealing with 15-year-old trainee alcoholics.

We should not be surprised. Strong alcohol sweetened to their juvenile taste, in the form of alcopops, is targeted at them relentlessly by an unscrupulous drinks industry. Youngsters have the money to buy it, and clearly find it easy to do so. This easy access must be stopped, and we are fully behind the police's blitz on adults who aid and abet childhood drunkenness.

Today's report also reveals that more than one in five of those prosecuted for public disorder offences are women. This unhappy trend has its origins in the emergence of the so-called "ladette" in the 1990s.

A growing number of "ladettes" are now aping the worst excesses of binge-drinking men. Some may regard this as an equality of sorts. But the fact that men, women and children are sinking to the same drunken level does not say much for York or society as a whole.

Updated: 11:40 Friday, February 06, 2004