Summer time offers no break from underage drinking prevention

By Rebecca Smith

Northeast Texas Coalition Against Substance Abuse

Students and their parents often look forward to summer break all year round. Family vacations, cookouts, pool parties, and blockbuster movies are just a few of the activities families traditionally enjoy together.

These are also great opportunities for parents to talk to their children about underage drinking.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends starting the conversation as early as 9 years old, but it’s never too late to start.

“Underage drinking peaks in the United States in June and July. Every day in July, an average 11,600 young people take their first drink,” according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). For other months, the average is between 5,000 and 9,000 new users per day.

Some parents don’t see the harm in letting their teens drink. “As long as they are at home and aren’t driving, I can teach them to drink responsibly,” is a common misconception that some parents have.

But a study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs showed otherwise; children who had sipped alcohol by sixth grade were about five times more likely to have a full drink by the time they were in 9th grade, and four times more likely to binge drink or get drunk.

If parents communicate to their children that even a small amount of alcohol is acceptable for a minor, children and teens believe drinking underage is far less dangerous than it actually is.

Drinking underage is related to a whole host of issues: a young brain is much more susceptible to damage from alcohol, specifically damage to the parts of the brain responsible for memory and learning. Youth who drink are at a higher risk for physical and sexual assault; they are five times more likely to drop out of high school. Someone who starts drinking at age 13 (the average age of first use in Texas) has a 45 percent chance of become alcohol dependent; this drops to a 7 percent chance if they wait until they are 21 years old. Youth who drink are more likely to engage in unprotected sex, and in 2013 underage drinking cost the citizens of Texas $5.5 billion.

Then there’s the issue of binge drinking — more than four drinks in a setting for females, more than five for males — which is how 90 percent of teens drink when they do consume alcohol. A young brain is much more susceptible to alcohol poisoning, which can be fatal.

And tragically, 5,000 people under age 21 die each year from alcohol-related accidents. This is more deaths than all the other illicit drugs combined. This includes not just car accidents, but homicides, suicides, fires, drownings, and other accidents like falling in a deadly way — all of which are more likely when someone has been drinking.

And yet, according to a recent survey released by Caron, a national recovery center, only two-fifths have parents with a zero-tolerance policy for underage drinking; 41 percent believed it’s best for teenagers to learn to ‘drink responsibly’ in high school rather than waiting until they’re of legal age; and 29 percent agreed it was fine for highschool students to drink as long as they don’t drive.

So what’s a parent to do with all this alarming information? Some parents wonder if their teen will even listen to them, but many studies have found that teens report that their parents are the No. 1 influence in their lives, even above friends and media.

Experts recommend that parents give a strong disapproval message and have consequences laid out if your child does drink. Even if you haven’t disapproved in the past, you can discuss the things you have learned since about the dangers of drinking. And don’t just make it a one-time conversation — keep talking and remind your kids about the dangers, and why they are too valuable to you to allow them to drink.