The problem of teenagers drinking goes back to the glass at home

IT SEEMS we may have been hitting the wrong target in the drive against underage drinking. Apparently the real culprits behind the rise in teen drinking are not children but their parents, so we may have been wasting our time bombarding the former with drink-aware health information and education programmes. A new survey shows that oneseventh of parents believe that it is okay for children as young as 15 – and even younger – to drink at home. And half of all parents think it’s acceptable for children to drink at home before the age of 18. Now I don’t know where Irish parents got the idea that teenagers drinking at home, rather than, say, in the local park on a winter’s night, was a positive development. Perhaps we have been watching too many charming French films where young and old sip wine around the dinner table and think it’s the height of sophistication.

Maybe we believe that if we introduce alcohol into family life it will lose its illicit glamour and we will rear a generation of responsible drinkers.

Or maybe we are just too busy getting trolleyed at home to care.

However, the medical research makes for a sobering read. It shows a link between problem drinking and age, and the younger we are when we hit the hard stuff, the greater the likelihood of binge drinking, alcoholism and medical conditions associated with heavy alcohol consumption. And that’s before we get to the deleterious effects of alcohol on brain development and concentration.

Perhaps it’s time these hard facts were hammered home to parents.