New | Underage drinking fuels worrying trend in Hong Kong, amid lack of regulation
The city's lax control on underage drinking is fuelling a worrying rise in teenage excess, as Hong Kong has no laws that stop children from buying alcohol from stores.
It’s a Friday afternoon and Cathal Kiely is getting ready for a busy weekend at the clutch of watering holes that he owns in Central – Solas, Killa, Shore and Rula Bula. One problem the Irishman is relieved he will no longer have to deal with is that of young teens slipping in for drinks.
That’s because he has hired a private security firm to keep them out.
Kiely, who has been in the local food and beverage business for eight years, used to have a headache with teenage drinkers.
“We’ve caught kids as young as 15 trying to get into the bar.”
Now, he says, he spends more than HK$1 million a year on security, whose main purpose is to “manage the door and catch underage drinkers”.
But while he is fending them off in his establishments, teenagers are picking up bottled cocktails and beer from nearby convenience stores, and Kiely says the presence of inebriated youngsters is impossible to miss in nightlife areas in Central.
Several times he has had to help children who had passed out on the street.