Underage drinking

[tiggerblue10]

How can this be dealt with? If you can't stop kids taking knives from kitchen drawers how can you stop them from taking alcohol from the drinks cabinet?

[Lisa1983]

Don't have drink in the drinks cabinet! Seriously though, kids who are binge drinking are ruining this country and the goverment and parents need to do more about the whole situation. Harsher punishments need to be imposed on them to show we mean business. Boot camps are the answer I think. They need to be taught a lesson about life instead of ruining their own and others.

[jake-the-peg]

ROTFLMAO

Absolutely Lisa "Barbarians at the gate" "hell in a handbasket"

I'll tell you who's fault it is it's underage drinkers!

They're probably contributing to global warming too!

This country has had a problem with drunken yobs for over 500 years

And calls for harsher punishments too! Shall we give them 6 months inside for being caught with 2 litres of diamond white.

Get real

[tiggerblue10]

Everyone keeps saying that the government needs to do more but I agree with you that parents need to be more responsible for their kids.

[Lakitu]

But isn't it just part and parcel of growing up and pushing the boundaries?

I'm certain I'm not the only member here that dabbled with alcohol before I'd turned 18?

[tiggerblue10]

This is the 21st century and you would have thought that the human race would have evolved a bit over the last 500 years.

[tiggerblue10]

I had my first experience of alcohol when I was around 10 but I didn't go round bingeing on vodka, diamond white etc as is being reported in the news today.

[Lakitu]

Yes, we have evolved, but we're still human and we naturally push our boundaries. You see it in small children whinging at the supermarket for a sweet from their parent/guardian. You see it in 10 years old chatting back. You see it in teenagers trying alcohol.

Don't think I'm condoning underage drinking, I'm not, but I also understand to an extent why they do it. I wouldn't change my underage drinking antics, which included being picked up by the police and taken back home to my parents and subsequently getting a hiding and grounded. I pushed my boundaries and I knew I'd overstepped the mark. I didn't do it again.

[ChuckFickens]

It always strikes me as strange that we have one of the worst problems with underage drunkenness when we are one of least tolerant countries in the world of underage drinking. a lot of other countries kids are encouraged to have a glass of wine with the family meals from a fairly young age and seem to grow up understanding alcohol and respecting it far more than English children do.

Having said that though, I wonder how many English families still have a family meal, and if they do have a family meal they are probably more likely to be encouraged to have fries and go large then have a glass of wine with it

[jake-the-peg]

Oh we have evolved. So much so that in the west we have a gene that produces a protein that helps us metabolise alcohol. It's been a part of our culture for that long!

But seriously you don't see anything even the tinyest bit niaive about suggesting that the drinking problem is due to kids stealing from daddies drinks cabinet and that parents need better control?

Not even a bit?

Much of this drink is bough by older kids or is shoplifted.

Parents may be heavy drinkers themselves - and long since gave up trying to control what their kids do in the evenings.

But those aren't the ones to worry about. It's the violence associated with drink in 20-30 year old men that you want to be concerned about.

And no nipping it in the bud will not help (even if you could) it'd only make 18 even more of a rite of passage to go and get lathered every night.

If you could somehow stop the 20-30 year olds you'd start to wear away the role models for the kids.

[sleepy1]

dont know why the enjoy drinking so much ..i drunk to much last night and have felt rubbish all day ....what a waste off a day :( dont let anyone drink till age off 21 might help a bit

[tiggerblue10]

I don't know about anyone else but I must have developed an intolerance to alcohol which is why I don't drink. I guess we all have different tolerance levels to alcohol. Mine is definitely low.

In my 20's I used to go pubbing every Friday after work and down at least 5 pints of lager then go home and wrap myself around the S bend! Needless to say I felt crap for the rest of the weekend. What a waste of a weekend.

The last time I drank was at Ascot last year and that was on an empty stomach. I won't go into detail about what happened but lets just say I haven't gone out drinking since then.

Why do we do it to ourselves?

[joggerjayne]

The age at which you are legally allowed to drink alcohol is 5.

[Octavius]

Whilst I certainly enjoyed a few drops of the bad stuff at a young age, I don�t ever recall getting battered on a street corner under a streetlight.

A 14 year old girl interviewed about this issue and when asked why she drank replied:

�well there aint nuffink to do on a Friday night and its borin, drinking makes Friday nights more funny, specially if everyone else is doin it as well�.

Although that could be considered, na�ve, ill-educated, somewhat lacking in enthusiasm, self-control and any particularly optimistic outlook on life, I imagine a 24 year old would say pretty much the same thing. So who is setting an example to whom?

[Panic Button]

When I was a kid most of the booze tasted disgusting, and you had to struggle to get it down.

Now they have alcopops.

[winebuyer]

I agree, Octavius. Setting an example is so important.

I also agree with sleepy1.

One of the dangers of alcohol is that it can be seen as a �rite of passage�.

By the time a child is in their mid teens, the parents should have created an environment where alcohol is not exciting. If your children�s friends say �let�s go and buy some alcohol�, it would be good to think that your children would say �err, why?�

Create an environment where alcohol is not mysterious, dangerous, sexy, exciting, etc. It�s just � well, a bit ordinary.

As jj says, children can drink at home from the age of 5. Parents have many years to educate their children about alcohol. If they don�t do it, then don�t blame anyone else.

[DarkMajes71c]

Personally I think we need to give the kids something to do. At the moment there aren�t enough out of school activities for them to engage in so they steer themselves down the self destructive path. Those activities which are available such as scouts are stigmatised by many youths and that has to be dealt with. make scouts cool again and we may well see a lot of knife touting kids starting to do interesting camp craft instead of stabbing each other.

[MiniN]

the media, exaggerates underage binge drinking so the mass believe it is an uncontrolled epidemic.

yes it happens but its not the norm for the majority of teenagers in the UK.

Most people drink when they are underage because if you set an age limit on something there will always be people underage doing it. that's what happens. just because some people drink underage doesn't mean that they are causing problems and wrecking society. I don't recall how me and my friends ruined the country when we sat in the parks with our cheap wine or cider as teenagers.