I’m a teetotaller – banning alcohol-free beer shows Labour’s contempt for young people like me
The government’s proposed ban on sales of 0 per cent drinks for under-18s is deeply patronising. Young people like me are capable of making healthy choices without the government holding their hand, says Samiksha Bhattacharjee
The government may be about to ban zero-alcohol drinks for under-18s. Increasingly, there is a strange paradox at the heart of British policymaking. I’m a student – legally, an adult. I can join the army, marry, and pay taxes. People younger than me – 16-year-olds – may soon even have the right to vote. Yet, according to health minister Ashley Dalton, my generation is so fragile and impressionable that we cannot be trusted with a can of alcohol-free cider or a bottle of Peroni 0.0.
The government says it is “exploring measures” to ban the sale of low and no-alcohol (“NoLo”) drinks to 16- and 17-year-olds. The justification? Even if there’s no alcohol, the mere flavour of beer acts as a slippery slope, says the nanny state, leading young people like me into a life of binge-drinking. Our leaders believe alcohol-free drinks are a ‘gateway’ to alcoholism.
This is patronising, to say the least. It’s also nonsense. Of course alcohol-free drinks are not a ‘gateway’ to life-ruining addiction, any more than veggie burgers are a ‘gateway’ to Big Macs, or decaf coffee to a crippling caffeine addiction. It also does nothing to reduce binge drinking. To state the obvious, if the drink doesn’t contain any alcohol, it won’t make you drunk. It is not an intoxicant. To regulate it as one is to admit the state is no longer interested in preventing harm, but prefers instead to police behaviours.
Labour’s ruling class of bureaucrats fail to realise my generation has done the hard work for them. Gen Z is the most sober generation in decades. We aren’t staying off the booze because a government minister is chaperoning us, but because we are living healthier, more conservative lifestyles. In 2025, a record 200m pints of alcohol-free beer were sold in the UK, with Gen Z among the most enthusiastic customers.
Young people can’t win
Young people like me can’t win. The government is hostile to vices like booze, but even when we actively avoid it by choosing alcohol-free drinks, we still end up on the sharp end of a ban on our favourite products. Having a 0 per cent option, for me, meant being able to stay included in a social circle at the pub without the pressure to get drunk. In fact, it normalised not getting drunk. Banning these harmless drinks will redirect young people to high-sugar alternatives like Coca-Cola (or real booze), make it harder for teetotallers like me to build a social life and support British pubs, and do absolutely nothing to help tackle alcoholism.
We only have to look to our European neighbours to see the failure of this heavy-handed approach. In the Mediterranean, where the social stigma around alcohol is stripped away at a very young age, levels of youth binge drinking are significantly lower than they are here. Rather than replicating this success, the government seems intent on reinforcing alcohol’s status as a “forbidden fruit”. We are teaching teenagers that socialising is a binary option: you either drink or stay home – 0 per cent alcohol drinks are a middle-ground option, and the state is about to set it on fire.
There is a pernicious undertone to this direction, too. Telling a 17-year-old they’re too immature to handle a can of alcohol-free beer lets them know the state thinks they lack basic agency. My peers are being trained to believe they are incapable of making healthy choices without a government minister holding their hand. This is neither true nor helpful.
According to the Nanny State Index, Britain is now the seventh least-free country in Europe due to high taxes and strict rules on how we live. This new ban on 0 per cent beer is another example of politicians acting like babysitters rather than leaders. It is part of a broader trend of stunted adulthood, where “safety” is an excuse for everything from banning social media to restricting university societies (such as at Bristol, where administrators used “safeguarding” to override a democratic student vote and limit who could join clubs and societies). If we don’t trust young people to choose to drink a non-alcoholic beverage, how can we trust them to help decide the future of the country at the ballot box?
The message from the government is clear: we want your votes, we want your taxes, and we want your labour, but we don’t want you to choose your own drinks. It’s time for the state to take its hands off the “NoLo” aisle and start treating young people like the mature adults they are.
Samiksha Bhattacharjee is the president of the University College London Libertarian Society, a Young Voices contributor, and an author. You can find her work on YouTube, Instagram and Substack at Samiksha’s State of the Debate, where she discusses culture, politics, and economics.