Underage drinking is the use of alcohol by people younger than the legal age to drink in most jurisdictions. It is a serious issue that affects youth and their families.
Teenagers are often tempted to try alcohol because of peer pressure or other factors. It is important for parents to talk with their teens about underage drinking and provide them with information about the negative effects of alcohol and how it affects them physically and emotionally.
Explain why you don't approve of underage drinking and express your concern for their health, safety, and well-being. This will help them feel supported in their decision to resist the influence of alcohol.
Reevaluation of strategies for underage drinking prevention:
In the past, many school-based anti-drug programs focused primarily on knowledge about drugs and how to avoid them. However, more recent research has shown that the key to effective drug and alcohol prevention is the combination of these two elements: the host (the person) and the environment.
It is also important to understand that alcohol is a highly addictive substance and can have serious physical, mental, emotional, social, and economic consequences for young people. It can lead to problems with school performance and even affect a teen's future job prospects.
Stress, anxiety and depression can be very common in teenagers and alcohol use can make those problems worse. In addition, alcohol can cause a teen to miss school and to have trouble concentrating in class.
Other consequences of underage drinking include risky behavior, such as driving while intoxicated or having unprotected sex, stealing or fighting, and it can even increase the chances of getting arrested for a crime. In addition to these negative effects, underage drinking is associated with thousands of emergency room visits each year.
Alcohol can wreak havoc on a child's brain development, leading to psychiatric and learning issues that will continue into adulthood. It can delay puberty, disrupt sleeping patterns, interfere with school work and increase a teen's risk of liver and heart disease, high blood pressure, and certain types of cancer.
It can trigger a teen's thoughts about suicide or other potentially dangerous or self-harming behaviors. It can also cause a teen to have frequent nightmares, experience mood swings or irritability, and be more likely to be angry or aggressive.
Underage drinking causes more than 5,000 adolescent deaths each year and costs the nation over $2 billion annually, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. It also leads to thousands of injuries each year, including homicides, rapes and other violent crimes.
The majority of these underage drinking related deaths involve car crashes, homicides and suicide. They occur because of alcohol's ability to alter the brain's normal function and cause emotional instability, lowered judgment, tampered thinking and impaired decision-making.
Increasing the penalties for underage drinking can reduce the number of kids who drink and may prevent them from experimenting with other drugs. In some states, penalties for underage drinking can include fines, jail time, community service or other types of sanctions.
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