Comments on: A question of age…

By: Nat

Nat — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:14:23 +0000

I, being a teenager myself, have been on all sides of this and seen all sides of this. My parents don’t drink, and I was brought up knowing that I can have a beer or alcopop once in a while, as long as it is under somebody’s supervision. Nevertheless, at one point I did make a mistake (and I am never going back again). My “friends” on the other hand, hang out on roads, drunk, almost every night. The reason is not that they don’t understand the health consequences. At this age we feel immortal. So what is the reason? THEY HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO.
Us kids are seen as a disease. During our exams you give us a chance to shine; and boy do we shine (exam results have been improving tremendously)! Then we are told it proves our stupidity and that exams are simply too easy. Right.
Many teenagers are shoved aside by those who don’t want to catch this “disease”. They are looked down upon by club owners and thrown out. Eventually, these children are so deluded they become diseased. Of course there are always the bad eggs, and there always will be, but there is little to do about those that enjoy harming themselves.
There need to be more constructive things for these kids to do, and they need to be encouraged to BE together rather than DRINK together (as somebody before me so rightly said).
Give us a chance, open up a few 16+ clubs without the alcohol – see what happens.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:20:29 +0000

People seem to forget the importance of peers in these situations. Any child who has a friend who drinks and seems to have great fun is going to be affected. The parents are an important control on a childs views of alchol. There is too much exageration concerning liver disease and binge drinking. There is a difference between binging and heavy drinking.

By: Danny

Danny — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 18:46:06 +0000

im 15 i know my limit i had my first drink at 8 i first got drunk when i was 14 but i only drink on special occasion and my parents let me do this. so i might get drunk maybe 10 times a year

By: Lydia

Lydia — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:46:08 +0000

Im 14 and I know many underage drinkers and trust me some of their parents are extremly strict on alcohol but it still happens. I think sometimes kids drink to be cool because its breaking the rules and others do it to have a good time just like adults want to really.I think if you let people drink when there 14 and go in pubs then they could go in a pub and at least they could’nt drink too much then.

I think people who give information to children on drinking should have be re-formed alcoholics but instead of just telling us not to drink they should tell us limits of how much you should drink if you do, not just put us off all the time.I think u should be aloud to drink at 14 but not get drunk.

By: heulwen renshaw

heulwen renshaw — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:46:08 +0000

Anyone would think that Alchoholic drink is the ‘be all and end all’ of all the things that life has to offer, big mistake! There are so many other things to take an interest in other than ‘alchohol’, it only serves to make one behave stupid anyway, and who wants to knock about with ‘silly billies’. People give way so easily if one is intoxicated, which just goes to prove that it has such a hold on you that you cannot truly ‘be yourself’ whilst under the influence.We ought to be in control of our lives, otherwise people can easily get hurt..I’ve seen young people drunk and they don’t know what’s happening to them…their brain totally ‘shumphed’. I’d rather wake in the morning ‘remembering’ what kind of night I had rather than worry what could have gone on. Enjoy your evenings out yes, but keep your wits about you too.

By: Hannah

Hannah — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:44:22 +0000

Im 16 years old and i drink, iv have drank alot at times, when i know i should have not because iv done alot of bad things in the past, but today i think that they can easily get there hands onto it e.g using a older sisters or brothers I.D
teenages drink because they think everyone else is doing it then why cant i? also there are other factors such as trying to get away from reality because they are stressed with life. Putting a ban will just make teenages rebel more and try and get it with other ways

By: Lee Rossi

Lee Rossi — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:26:23 +0000

To be fair i dont think the government have thought through the whole law that well.
At 17 you can drive a car and at 18 you can drink and frankly driving a car is much more dangerous than drinking.
Considering that of the law in Holland you can drink and buy at 16. They dont seem to have the binge drinkers like we do in Britain.
I think the we need to re-think the ‘nagging’ of binge drinking and educate.

By: Holly Bennett

Holly Bennett — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:27:03 +0000

My parents allowed me to drink small amounts (e.g. tiny glass of wine, a taste of my dad’s beer) since I was a child. Literally as long as I can remember. They have never, ever imposed any rules about how much alcolhol I can or can not drink. I am now 19 years old and have NEVER been drunk. I have no urge to binge, and can’t imagine I ever will. Most I’ll have is a couple of beers or single measure JD&cokes in the pub once a month or so.

I have friends whose parents were similar to mine, and they also have healthy attitudes to alcohol and don’t drink too much. Compare that with a couple of people I know whose parents were very strict- the second they got to university, they went off the rails and made themselves very ill, having no concept of what their limits were, too eager to try this mysterious “grown up” thing they’d always been denied.

I don’t think this is any conincidence. If people would stop treating young people like morons and alcohol as something to be feared, and maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.

By: Steven Dyson

Steven Dyson — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:01:18 +0000

The reason there are so many youngsters drinking on the streets is that it is much harder now for them to get into pubs or clubs. I grew up in the early 70′s, started work at 15yrs and started pubbing and clubbing at the same time. There was no way that I looked 18yrs, but I never ever got refused a drink, this was the same for a lot of people I know. By going to the pubs and clubs I learned a healthy respect for people as there was always someone older who would sort you out if you started causing trouble. If I was about in this day and age then I would most likely be one of the youngsters on the streets as I wouldn’t be able to get in a pub or club, I wouldn’t want to be stuck in home with my parents, so what else would there be for me to do. There are countries in the world that have no age limit for drinking alcohol and there societies have hardly any problems with drink issues. The young have always rebelled by doing things that are illegal, if you make it legal then it’s not such a big deal and they don’t get such a buzz. The law as it is now is just forcing kids to do things on the streets that they would normally have got away with in the relative safety of a public house, and with these youngsters being on the street they are attracting even younger ones to join them. I think the age should be lowered to sixteen or abolished altogether, landlords should then start using there powers of evicting people if they are drunk or causing trouble. It may take a couple of years for things to settle to a normality, but after that I think things would be o.k.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:50:41 +0000

There are far worse things to give kids than alcohol. Most grown ups do it unknowingly from an early age.

The snag is that doctors are badly informed by the government. They think chemical sweeteners are ‘the healthy option’. Anyone can now search out for themselves what the truth is by simply looking to the Internet.

The FDA were forced to release a list of side effects associated to Aspartame – it has 92 known side effects yet the UK government still insist it is safe.

Look at the conditions that have increased since it was widely introduced in ’95:

Obesity – People getting fatter for no reason.
Behavioural Problems – Road Rage, Truancy, Insolent Kids.
Asthma –
Birth Defects –
Mystery Illnesses -

The list is long and alcohol is not the root cause of society’s problems – Aspartame is.

http://www.sweetpoison.com