Urgent action needed (From The Oxford Times)

Urgent action needed

6:50am Thursday 18th March 2010 in

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Sir – Councillor Louise Chapman must be very naive to believe that . . . ‘If (young people) appear to be under the influence of alcohol, then they should be banned from the centre.’ This is the perfect pantomime scenario: You’re drunk!’ Oh no I’m not’. Oh yes you are!’ The whole point of breathalysing is that an objective measure is taken of the state of the young person; if s/he is over the known limit, s/he is not allowed in.

I’m sure that councillor Chapman and I would agree entirely on the undesirability of breathalysing young people, but in the state of our ‘broken society’, when young teenagers stagger around the streets throwing up in the gutter every Friday night, something urgent needs to be done.

This is at least one positive step in bringing the level of behaviour of young people up to that seen in other countries in Europe.

It would also mean that the Sweatbox could be open to young people who behave reasonably whilst still keeping out the yobs who are preventing that at the moment.

Dick Brown, Wantage