IT’S a real puzzler. Last week we had a report blaming parental habits for turning increasing numbers of youngsters on to alcohol.

On the same day police and trading standards revealed how a Friday night crackdown in one area of Accrington led to police stopping 40 young people – and seizing an astonishing 36 litres of lager and cider plus two litres of vodka. Some were as young as 13!

Children are boozing at an early age because they have seen their mums and dads in an inebriated state, we were told in the national study.

That’s strange because my experience of young teenagers is that parents are the last people they choose to use as role models.

In fact they will go to great lengths not to ape their elders.

Also if these adults are coming home after drinking to excess in bars they must be very much in the minority.

Pubs in East Lancashire across the country are closing on a daily basis because of the dwindling number of people going out for a pint in the evenings.

The sensible landlord’s only recipe for staying in business is to convert his pub into a bistro boozer and charge big bucks for small but ‘perfectly cooked’ portions of fancy food.

So if you believe these experts then the majority of offending parents must be getting drunk at home in front of the TV.

And their children, at least some of those in the Peel, Barnfield and Woodnook areas of Accrington, are going out and getting plastered.

All of which conjures up an odd predicament for police.

In the Accrington crackdown parents of 17 youngsters were contacted and asked to collect their children from the streets.

If the boffins are to be believed the adults shouldn’t have been in any fit state to travel to take their sons and daughters home!

No, of course the truth is that young teenagers have always enjoyed experiencing the illicit whether it’s drinking, smoking tobacco or pot or dabbling in sex.

They are not copying their parents so much as trying out things they know their parents wouldn’t want them to do.

But it is the responsibility of parents to keep this experimentation under control.

That means knowing where your young teenagers are and what they are getting up to.

It’s difficult to understand how any mum or dad could fail to notice that their 13-year-old arriving home late on a Friday night had consumed a litre of strong cider laced with vodka.

Unless they are themselves slumped on the settee drunk.