The teen vodka epidemic: Thousands of middle-class girls are drinking themselves senseless... with deadly results



Daniela had never drunk vodka before, so it took less than an hour for the half-bottle of spirits to render her unconscious on the floor of her best friend's hallway.



She and her friends had been left alone for the first time in a family home to celebrate a 15th birthday party.

The shocked parents of the birthday girl returned just in time to see Daniela being rushed to hospital in an ambulance to have her stomach pumped.

One of the youngsters had put the public schoolgirl in the recovery position when she passed out, and then dialled 999. It probably saved her life, according to the paramedics who carried her out on a stretcher.



Drinking epidemic: Thousands of middle-class teenage girls are downing neat vodka at parties (posed by models)



'It was utterly horrifying,' the mother of the party hostess told me. 'These are the sort of children who write thank-you letters to their grandparents at Christmas.

'They came back the day after the party with chocolates to apologise. That's how nice they are. They work hard at school and definitely don't do drugs. So how could it have happened?'

It happened, as the parents of too many well-heeled teenagers can attest, because of the teenage trend for drinking vast amounts of neat vodka - fast. And it's having devastating consequences for young girls in particular.



I know all too well how prevalent this problem has become because last month we agreed to have our first - and our last - house party for our 15-year-old daughter.



Unknown to us, one of the guests had smuggled in a bottle of vodka bought from a local shop.

We had agreed to go out before the party started and leave the 20 teenagers alone for two hours before returning to stay upstairs (in case of trouble) and bring the party to a close at 11.30pm.

We had banned alcohol, though we expected that a few bottles of beer might be brought in behind our backs.

The party ended after just 60 minutes, when we returned home early after an anguished phone call from our daughter.



A couple of the guests were drunk on neat vodka and one had become very ill.

As my husband threw out the partygoers, one thing became startlingly apparent. Not one of the boys was drunk - it was the girls who had gone too far.

Consider also the experience of one of the best schools in London, which has had to issue guidelines on school trips after a group of 14-year-old girls downed a bottle of vodka while on an art history trip to Italy.

One ended up unconscious and had to have her stomach pumped.

Girls in need of hospital treatment because of alcohol poisoning outnumber boys by three to one, according to Home Office Statistics

Girls in need of hospital treatment because of alcohol poisoning outnumber boys by three to one, according to Home Office Statistics.



More than 100 girls a week ended up in hospital last year after binge-drinking, with 4,939 girls aged between 14 to 17 being seen by doctors for alcohol poisoning over the past five years (compared to 1,776 boys) - an increase of 90 per cent since 2003.

Vodka is Britain's favourite spirit. Sales have tripled in the past five years because it has become 'cool' among the young.

The problem is that it can be 40 per cent proof - compared to wine, which is 13 per cent.



'Vodka is cheap - a 70cl bottle can be bought for £5 - and it's easy to get,' says Professor Roger Williams of University College, London, the country's foremost liver expert.



'It's being cleverly marketed with words such as "pure" and so it seems glamorous and safe.

'Teenagers also think it's easy to disguise and more difficult to smell on the breath.

'But it can be lethal if taken in excess. Vodka gets absorbed into the blood rapidly. It can cause arrhythmia, cardiac arrest, even sudden death.'

The drinks market is full of new brands of vodka, most of them aimed at young women.

There are designer-label fashion vodkas from Louis Vuitton and Roberto Cavalli, as well as the blush-rose-coloured Pinky and Diva, which comes with coloured crystals dangling in the bottle.



Marketing has helped vodka take centre stage in the nightclub, party and pop scene.

Product placement and celebrity endorsements have secured its position as a glamorous drink for the young generation.

Marketing: Designer-label fashion vodkas target young women

'Vodka has done extremely well at keeping the category contemporary and exciting,' says Michelle Strutton, senior drinks analyst at Mintel.

'It has strong appeal among young drinkers and both budget and premium growth is keeping the category buoyant, even during this economic downturn.'

The rapper Diddy describes himself as a strategic partner of the French vodka company Ciroc and is rumoured to earn 50 per cent of its profits.

Lady Gaga's Bad Romance pop video contained such blatant product placement that it looked like a vodka commercial.

Within the first 20 seconds of the video there are close-up shots of Lex Nemiroff vodka bottles.

Later, we see Lady Gaga having a clear liquid in a crystal glass being forced down her throat as she writhes on her back - not a good advert for responsible drinking.

As the singer is so popular with youngsters, it's a shameful example of irresponsible marketing.

Advertising alcohol to under-18s is strictly controlled by the Advertising Standards Association, but there doesn't seem to be anything regulating the use of alcohol in U.S. pop videos and movies popular with children.

SKYY Vodka has prominent product placement in Sex And The City 2 - which has a 15 certificate and is a film with a wide appeal to teenage girls.

'I am shocked a loophole exists that effectively allows back-door advertising to children,' says the psychologist Jacqui Marson.

'Children are getting unhelpful and dangerous messages about alcohol. Lady Gaga drinking vodka would have much more power and influence on a child than a health education film at school warning of the dangers of alcohol.'

Forty per cent of 13 and 14-year-olds reported being 'drunk or stoned' when they had sex for the first time, according to the Institute of Alcohol.

Of those aged 16 to 24, one in seven had unprotected sex when drunk; one in five had sex they later regretted; and one in ten revealed they have been so drunk they have been unable to remember if they had sex the night before or not.

Many parents have not grasped the seriousness of the situation. Fathers may feel almost nostalgic about the first time they had a hangover after drinking too much beer, but today it's the girls who are drinking to excess, not the boys.

Because of natural physiological differences, females can withstand only half the amount of alcohol a male can drink, but the fashion is for teenage girls to match drink for drink with their male friends - or consume even more.

'It's not a big deal, you know,' one of the girls at Daniela's party told me. 'It isn't really a party unless an ambulance comes. The girls who get taken to hospital always recover.'

Celebrity endorsement: Lady Gaga featured Lex Nemiroff vodka in her Bad Romance video; Diddy is a strategic partner of French vodka company Ciroc

Tragically, that's not true, as the grieving parents of 16-year- old Rhona Tavener know. The teenager from Reading, Berkshire, died after a house-warming party last year.

It's thought the straight-A GCSE student, who was not a regular drinker, consumed half-a-litre of vodka before collapsing. Her life-support machine was turned off four days later.

When I asked Daniela about collapsing at her friend's birthday party, she put it down to the fact that she hadn't eaten all day so she would look slim in her dress.

Daniela and her friends not only believe that vodka is glamorous and chic, they told me it was calorie free and somehow good for them, or at least less damaging than other drinks, because it is 'pure'.

'It's not like alco-pops - those have sugar in them and make you fat,' they claimed.

One 15-year-old girl told me: 'We usually buy it from corner shops - it's more difficult to get it from supermarkets - or we nick it from our parents' drinks cabinets. They mostly don't notice.

'But it's really not hard to buy. We don't often even need fake ID because the small shops don't always ask for any, and we look older anyway.

'It makes us feel strong, exciting and sexy. Our parties are so full on that you have to arrive ready to really wow the boys.'

These girls are drinking neat vodka before they even get to a party because they are so nervous of how their appearance will be judged by their peers.

Impossibly glamorised and sexual images in magazines and pop videos have made them feel intimidated and unhappy.

And vodka is so cheap, accessible and alluring that they see it as a shortcut to the glamour, social and sexual success they crave.

That's why nice, middle-class girls drink vodka. To our shame, that's why so many of them drink so much that they end up in hospital, or even the morgue.