The tax on alcohol should be doubled to discourage under-age drinking, according to a group of experts in Tuesday’s AD.

The move would also save billions of euros as the damage caused by drunken teenagers declined, says the paper.
The call comes from the alcohol prevention foundation Stap, criminologist Jan van Dijk and paediatrician Nico van der Lely, who say it is time for drastic measures.
They say the soft approach of the past 20 years has not worked and the only option is to raise the price of alcohol.
The Netherlands has been wrestling the problem of teenage drinking in recent years. Last December new figures from the national statistics office CBS showed that Dutch teenagers are now drinking less. The number of teens who use alcohol fell from 85% in 2003 to 79% in 2007.
This is ‘probably’ due to the need to prove you are at least 16 when buying alcohol, said CBS researcher Jan Latten.