IN your Comment column (September 22), you criticise the council's plans to spend money introducing and enforcing a ban on outdoor drinking in Little Lever, as a means of controlling youth drinking, on the basis that: "it is obviously illegal for those under 18 to drink alcohol outdoors in the first place".

I do not, however, believe the latter to be the case. When I researched this subject some years ago, I was surprised to discover that while it was illegal for under-18s to buy alcohol, it was perfectly legal for them to drink it other than on licensed premises.

Similarly, while it was an offence to buy alcohol for someone under 18 for consumption on licensed premises, it was perfectly legal for consumption elsewhere.

We had, therefore, the strange situation that if a father took his 15-year-old son into a pub and bought him an alcoholic drink, both would have broken the law if he consumed it there.

If he drank it in the bus shelter down the road, however, no law would have been broken. Unless the law has changed in the meantime, therefore, it is perfectly legal for under-18s to drink alcohol on the streets, and the council's proposed course of action is probably the only effective way of preventing them from doing so.

Geoffrey Breakell

Hatfield Road

Bolton