Current status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 17 December 2024
To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to educate young people on alcohol marketing in schools.
The Scottish Government is working to ensure children and young people learn about a variety of substances including alcohol, medicines, drugs, tobacco and solvents as part of Curriculum for Excellence. Our aim is by educating children and young people about substance use and the impact it can have on their life and health, this will prevent them making unhealthy choices. Education alone will not turn the tide of substance use but it is an important strand within a broad range of measures across the community, designed to tackle this issue.
The Scottish Government remains committed to progressing work on protecting children and young people from exposure to alcohol advertising, including commissioning Public Health Scotland to carry out a review of the evidence for restrictions on alcohol marketing. The findings from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Survey (2024) is encouraging as it showed that levels of drunkenness in school-aged children (15 year-olds) in Scotland have steadily declined and are now at their lowest in 32 years.