Teens Get Free Drinks From Family And Relatives

According to a national report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released on Thursday nearly 40% of underage drinkers get free booze from an adult.

Drinking is becoming a major problem in many nations and when on one hand we should be thinking about ways to keep our younger generation out of clutches of alcoholism it’s we only who are offering them free drinks and making them addicted.

Like older days when teenagers used to lie about their age and would show fake ID’s to get the booze, now-a-days they don’t have to do so as the findings shows that more than 600,000 teens received alcohol by their parents in the last month alone.

Approximately half of the adolescents in the United States have revealed that they have consumed alcohol. With 10.8 million underage drinkers in the country, more than 40 percent said they got alcohol free from an adult during the past month and one in 16 gets it from their parents.

The report found more than fifty percent of the underage current alcohol users said they were at someone else's place when they had their last drink and 30 percent report drinking at their own home.

Read Admiral Steven Galson, acting surgeon general said, “Parents and other adults can play an important role in helping influence -- for better or for worse -- young peoples’ behavior with regards to underage drinking.”

The survey polled 158,000 youths in the ages of 12 to 20 years between 2002 and 2006. It was a nationwide review based on data from the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health.

Acting Surgeon General Dr. Steven K. Galson said, "In far too many instances, parents directly enable their children's underage drinking -- in essence encouraging them to risk their health and well-being."

He added, "Proper parental guidance alone may not be the complete solution to this devastating public health problem -- but it is a critical part."

The study revealed that nearly 5,000 deaths of people under 21 each year in the United States was due to the underage drinking. And in many cases, booze was provided by either parents or guardians -- what are they trying to teach teens by such behavior.

Vehicle crash is not the only major factor of drinking but such teenagers becomes victim of date rape and sexual assault. According to the same study, each year, an average of 3.5 million people ages between 12 to 20 years meet the diagnostic criteria for abusing alcohol or getting addicted.

Females start drinking alcohol much sooner than boys do but boys end surpassing girls as they get closer to the legal drinking age, report said.

When next time your teenager asks you to buy alcohol, think twice what you want to do -- kill them or save them -- the choice is yours.

The U.K. government is considering the proposals to check underage drinking under which the Brit parents who allow their children to have even a sip of wine or beer at home could face prosecution.

Med Guru