2 ms·
Maybe not "give them access," but I think we tend to underestimate adolescents' abilities to select out of behavior. From personal experience: I was able to acc
by woodruffw 4y ago
Maybe not "give them access," but I think we tend to underestimate adolescents' abilities to select out of behavior. From personal experience: I was able to access alcohol at a pretty early age, and thus avoided a lot of the "typical" American young adult experience with it (not drinking until college, at which point you black out at your first party.)
Tobacco is a step further in terms of addictive potential, but I think the US could generally learn from Europe's approach to adolescent drinking.
- tehcheat418 4y agoI think early alcohol consumption is also associated with alcoholism. Seems like a bit of gamble to not strongly discourage it in adolescence. (https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA67/AA67.htm#:~:text=People%20who%20begin%20drinking%20early,and%20poor%20performance%20in%20school https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA67/AA67.htm#:~:tex....)
- woodruffw 4y agoAssociated, yes, but the causation is not clear: it could be the case that early drinking predisposes adolescents to alcoholism, or that adolescents who would be predisposed to alcoholism as adults are reflected in early drinking statistics. These surveys are also done on American adolescents, who are more likely to obtain and consume alcohol illicitly than their European counterparts. It would be interesting to see comparative statistics on the two. Finally: this bulletin mixes up different demographics: you have (1) COAs who are more likely to become alcoholics themselves, (2) adolescents who engage in binge drinking, which is generally correlated with alcoholism in adulthood, and (3) an unmeasured population of drinking-but-not-binging adolescents.