TEENAGERS are trouble. They always have been and they always will be.

In the Fifties it was rock and roll and Elvis's gyrating pelvis (Percy Filth!), in the Sixties it was free love and marijuana (peace, man), in the Seventies it was punk and pills (God save the Queen), in the Eighties it was glue and big hair (who shot JR?) and in the Nineties it was ecstasy and grunge (like, y'know, duh).

Now, as our teenagers trudge miserably into another century, it is all of the above, plus a few more thrown in for good measure. Teenagers are still trouble, it's just that in our modern society there is so much more trouble available for them to get into.

Last week I berated them for having more sleep than me - well, if they will flaunt their eight hours a night and double at weekends they get what they deserve - but nodding off is not actually illegal as far as I know. Now, however, they have upped the stakes.

A new study has found that almost half the secondary school pupils in England, Scotland and Wales have broken the law at least once in the few seconds a day when they are not asleep.

Researchers for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation also discovered that violence, including weapon-carrying and fights, are an "acknowledged part of life" for a significant number of young people, with one in ten boys aged 11 to 12 admitting carrying a knife or other weapon in the previous year and one in five boys aged 15 to 16 admitting attacking someone with the intention of seriously hurting them. That is, when they are sober enough to hurt anyone.

The study, which is based on answers to a confidential questionnaire given by 14,000 children in 89 secondary schools, found that binge drinking is commonplace among children as young as 13.

A quarter of pupils aged 13 and 14 claim to have downed five or more alcoholic drinks in a single session, with the proportion rising to a half of students aged 15 and 16.

And of those in the lowest age range surveyed, one in four 11-year-old boys and one in six 11-year-old girls admitted that they knocked back an alcoholic drink at least once a week.

Even allowing for exaggeration, the amount of alcohol being consumed by our kids is a serious cause for concern. It is not just that they are having an extra shot of eggnog at Christmas and throwing up spectacularly into their festive stocking. They are drinking themselves stupid on a regular basis while parents and politicians run around like headless chickens getting their feathers in a frizz about drugs.

Ecstasy is the bogeyman that we worry ourselves witless about while our kids nip down to the offy for a two-litre bottle of cider. We give ourselves nightmares imagining them popping pills at a rave when they are actually popping the tops on half a dozen cans of Heineken that we kindly left lying around the house for them.

The fact is that it is much easier for us adults to be judgmental about drugs because few of us use them. When it comes to alcohol, however, we tend to turn a blind eye. We ignore a danger that is staring us squarely in the face in favour of a ghostly presence that may or may not be lurking in the dark behind us, because not to do so would immediately reveal our hypocritical standpoint.

Our kids are more at risk from alcohol than from drugs, and more of them die every year as a result of sniffing solvents than taking Ecstasy. But we don't worry about them as much because they are legal. Potentially lethal, yes; but illegal, no.

If this latest Joseph Rowntree report shows us anything, it is that we should worry more about alcohol. We need to improve alcohol education in schools, with more emphasis on negative consequences such as accidents, deaths, dependence and - hit 'em where it hurts - impairment of sexual performance.

We need a crackdown on those who sell or make alcohol available to children (at present as few as 100 licences are withdrawn each year). And we - the parents - need to look again at our own alcohol consumption and the example we are setting for our kids.

Boring, I know, but sometimes it is the seemingly boring, long-term, relentless campaigns that work.

Once upon a time society thought it was all right to drink and drive, now we grab each others' car keys and launch into a lecture at the merest whiff of a Babycham. Perhaps in ten or 20 years' time, underage drinking will be just as unacceptable.

Perhaps.

Updated: 09:00 Tuesday, April 16, 2002