Support is growing in Germany’s Bundestag for a new law giving legal cover to sting operations against retailers that sell alcoholic beverages to underage young people.

Thomas Jarzombek, a “youth expert” in the Bundestag and a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre right Christian Democratic Union, said that a few local authorities in Germany are already using underage people to participate in what he and other supporters of the practice call “test purchases.”

However, current German law does not provide guidelines or legal cover for such operations, making a new law necessary, he said.

Mechthild Dyckmans, Germany’s federal drug commissioner, who is based in the Health Ministry, …