Kids - our kids - plunging alcohol down the hatch

Were enough parents suitably shocked to be reminded this week that so many offspring start downing alcohol as soon as they step into their teens? Many will have been. But possibly, maybe even probably, not enough of them. How many were moved to acquire a copy of an information booklet, titled "The Facts Masked by the Fun", on alcohol and young people, compiled by a fourth-year university pharmacy student, Maria Rita Agius, on the initiative of the Health Promotion Department?

The booklet was released along with the preliminary results of the 2006 Health Behaviour of School-Aged Children Study, which did not really reveal anything new other than that an alarmingly bad situation identified in 2002 is rapidly growing worse. According to Dr Mario Spiteri, director of the Department, they are believed to start experimenting with drink when they are 13 years old. As Dr Spiteri wryly put it to the media when the behavioural study results were released, the situation is going well beyond experimentation. (The Times, September 26)

The 2002 study had already shown a high incidence in the use of alcohol, particularly among 15-year-olds. At the first blush of shame the 2006 survey indicates that the trend is worsening, also among 11- and 13-year-olds. Early teenagers seem to be bingeing themselves silly more than ever before.

The 2006 study reveals a substantial increase in the number of 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds who indulge in alcohol compared to the same survey in 2002. A total of 21.5 per cent and 15.3 per cent of 13-year-old boys and girls respectively got drunk in the month prior to the study survey - nearly three times as many as four years ago.

The percentage of 11-year-olds who got drunk in the last 30 days before being surveyed was statistically insignificant four years ago. It has risen to just under one in ten of boys (9.7 per cent) and one in five of girls (4.9 per cent). The situation is three times as bad among 15-year-old boys and girls. Three in ten males in this category (29 per cent) and one in seven females (and 15.2 per cent) got drunk in the month covered by the 2006 survey.

Very probably, Health Promotion Department experts feel, the case of 13-year-olds, Malta will outdo the other 34 countries taking part in the study. It will top the list, and not just for 15-year-olds, who placed a worrying first in the 2002 survey when it came to the consumption of wines and spirits.

The preferences shown in the 2002 study repeated themselves in 2006: youngsters are mostly downing beer and wine. There tend to be more boys than girls who prefer beer. But close to half of 15-year-old young ladies surveyed for this year's study also have a predilection for beer.

Roughly just under half of 15-year-olds and a little over that of 13-year-olds love alcopops, which health experts believe whet the palate, so to put it, for real alcoholic beverages. Alcopops tend to be trendy designer drinks, young friends told me when I enquired, started becoming popular in the mid-Nineties.

An Alcohol Concern fact sheet records that alcopops appeared in the UK in the summer of 1995, after alcoholic lemonade was first sold in Australia. Research established that the peak age for drinking alcopops, some of which have an alcohol content of around five per cent, is 13 to 16.

It would not be wild to assume that the patterns noted abroad also apply to Malta. The local health study found that the percentage of youths who drank alcopops in Malta has increased. Over half of 15-year-olds and close to half of 13-year-olds drink them.

The preliminary results of the Malta survey will be analysed more deeply. It will be sent abroad to be compared to the other 34 participating countries taking part in a similar surveys. It is clear to the Health Promotion Unit that Malta does not follow southern Mediterranean trends when it came to alcohol consumption. It is more on a par with northern European countries.

I referred to the 2006 study as a reminder because, earlier the situation had been bared in a report on 'Alcohol in Europe', by the London-based Institute of Alcohol Studies for the EU Commission. The report analysed the health, social and economic impact of alcohol in Europe. That report showed that the drinking habits of our young. Maltese 15-16-year-olds placed them among youths who drink most frequently and more than most in Europe.

The London institute study had drawn widespread worried reactions in the rest of Europe, but became far less than a matter of urgent and frequent critical discussion in Malta. I had commented (in a "Talking Point" in The Times) that it should send a shiver down the spine of our own society, but it did not stop early teenagers from reaching out for more.

Parents did not flood the newspaper's letter columns with expressions of concern. Nor was there any focus on the conclusions by the political class.

The London institute reported that Europe is one of the heaviest drinking regions in the world. Some 23 million persons - five per cent of males, one per cent of females - are dependent on alcohol. It recorded that alcohol kills about 115,000 persons annually, including 10,000 bystanders or passengers, and causes 2,000 murders. It leads to around 60 different types of diseases and conditions, and is responsible for 60,000 underweight births each year.

Up to nine million children live in families ravaged by alcohol. Of all ill-health and early death in the EU, 7.5 per cent is due to alcohol, at a cost of €125 billion (€650 per household, or 1.3 per cent of EU GDP).

Malta holds her glass as determinedly and unsteadily as some of the worst of the lot. Excessive drinking among adults aside, the London report confirmed signs in the Malta 2002 survey that the next generation was already heading that way as well. The EU report indicated that nearly all 15-16-year-old Maltese students have already drunk alcohol at some time in their young life.

The Maltese student respondents, on average, downed their first drinks before they reached 13, and became drunk for the first time by a year later. The experimentation referred to by Dr Spiteri in mid-week was there in to see, loaded with a heavy threat to civil society.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) had warned, over a year ago, that alcohol was the biggest regular killer of young men across Europe - over 55,000, aged between 15 and 19. WHO publishes an extensive database, including an alcohol profile for individual countries. The organisation said that an alcohol policy advocacy organisation did not exist here. There is no mandatory driver education/treatment for offenders, and no traditional temperance association. In contrast self-help movements were reported to be very active.

The picture that emerges from the various studies on the inclination of the young in particular towards excessive drinking is startling. It may not be as harrowing as that of spreading addiction to drug abuse. It may not be less dangerous. Enacting legislation to deter selling alcohol to early teenagers is a necessary step to take. It is by no means sufficient.

If, as with so many legal provisions, ongoing enforcement is weak, legislation will remain a dead letter demonstrating the uselessness of Parliamentary talk that does not lead to dynamic action.

Not even legislation that is enforced can be enough. As with everything else good personal and social behaviour depends to a very large extent on education, and on good example.

Adults might ask themselves whether their own attitude to drinking is correct. Whether they consistently ensure that, if they drink, they do so in a mature and responsible manner. As with smoking, adults are exhorted to behave with due regard to their own health, and to that of others.

Areas in which one can smoke are restricted, even if there too enforcement is not as strict as it ought to be. Drinking is usually left to the individual, up to the point when excessive drink leads to unacceptable behaviour.

The young require much more focused action, in the form of protection through enforcement of suitable policies and regulations regarding alcohol selling, in a context of early and ongoing education.

To teach one must first learn. Unless society asks the questions and learns what makes boys and girls experiment with drink when barely in their teens, and takes appropriate action on the basis of the answers, little will be achieved.

Observable causal factors include peer pressure and, less evidently since bad example by parents, older siblings and other adults are two observable causal factors. The question should also be asked: where do boys and girls in their early teens get the money to buy alcoholic drinks, even if mostly beer and wine?

Studies on behaviour patterns can pinpoint the errors of our ways from our early teens. The 2006 report and earlier studies do so starkly. Yet, it seems, not starkly enough to mobilise widespread concerted action to do much more than nod towards the problem through legislation.

The frightening details in the various reports that pinpoint the situation attract attention when the media reports them. There is little follow-through with ongoing public projection of them so as to engender deeper public consciousness about a grave problem that is very clearly escalating.

The Times