Parents warned over teenage boozing (From York Press)

Parents warned over teenage boozing

9:47am Thursday 17th December 2009

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Parents who have a "laissez-faire" attitude to their children's drinking are putting them at risk, the chief medical officer has warned.

Sir Liam Donaldson said people who allow their teenagers to drink alcohol with their friends could be storing up problems while middle-class families who dilute their children's wine may also be misguided.

Parents should avoid exposing youngsters to "alcohol-fuelled environments" or family events where drinking is the central activity, he went on.

Yet parents could show their children that if alcohol is drunk at home it is consumed in a "positive" setting such as a family meal.

Sir Liam, who has announced his intention to step down as chief medical officer for England, said one of the risk factors for children drinking was parents having a "laissez-faire approach to a child drinking or getting drunk".

The idea that if you "somehow wean children on to alcohol at an early age they won't have any problems in later life, they will be sensible, is not supported by evidence," he added. In fact, studies have shown the opposite - that those who begin drinking early are more likely to binge drink in their teenage years and develop alcohol-related problems later in life.

"The more they get a taste for it, the more likely they are to be heavy drinking adults or binge drinkers later in childhood," Sir Liam said. "It's a bit of a middle-class obsession - the idea of taking out the wine bottle and diluting it. There's not a great problem to that as such but to extrapolate from that sort of situation that alcohol in general is a good thing just does not work. It's not supported by evidence."

Sir Liam was speaking as he published a report which suggests parents support the idea that under-15s should have an "alcohol free" childhood.

Between the ages of 15 and 17, if youngsters drink at all then they should do so infrequently and certainly on no more than one day a week, Sir Liam recommended. He said there was a need to challenge the stereotype of "the drunk as a hero" and pointed to self-confessed alcoholic footballers Paul Gascoigne and George Best.

In January, the Department for Children, Schools and Families will launch a campaign regarding the dangers of drinking among children and young people.

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