The concerns expressed over underage drinkers by readers following the Echo’s com-prehensive emphasis on the problem (August 17) are well addressed.

I would like to add my own observation that today’s youngsters look a lot older than they ever did in my 60s teenage generation.

I am five feet eleven inches and am already being eyeballed by a friend’s thirteen-year-old son.

In his hoody, baseball cap and cropped denims, all it takes is a dab of soft focus off-licence lighting to pass him off for aged eighteen.

Give him another year for his voice to deepen, grow a facial ‘shadow’ and the illusion will be complete.

A solution must surely be what some supermarkets are already insisting: that customers be required to prove that they are old enough (usually over twenty-five) with obligatory photo-graphic evidence.

This requirement should be taken beyond the current ‘guideline’ recommendation to become the law across the retail industry.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that such legislation would solve the problem completely.

Children are, after all, as resourceful as they were in my day. If they want alcohol they will figure out a way to get it, what ever the law says.

Doug Milne, Walpole Street, Weymouth