Alcohol addiction counsellors have cautioned parents against allowing teenagers to drink alcohol at home, following the controversial recommendation of a British anthropologist who spoke in Dublin this week.
Anthropologist Anne Fox, who has advised the British army and government on alcohol issues, said it had been proven that if young people grew up with alcohol as a normal part of life they were less prone to use it in a destructive way. She was talking to reporters after speaking at a seminar organised by Meas, the association set up by the drinks industry to promote responsible drinking.
Asked if parents should allow 15- or 16-year-olds to drink at home, she said, "I actually think that they should, yes, but the parents need a lot of education in order to be able to do that safely."
Dr Conor Farren, addiction psychiatrist at St Patrick's Hospital in Dublin, said he was shocked at this advice. He said that, by the time they reach 21, these teenagers would be bombarded by about 30,000 positive images of alcohol from the drinks industry, but would have received very few negative images.
"When adolescents are making a decision about drinking, they have to have someone who is giving a counter-balance to the information," he said. "Parents have a responsibility to give that balance. You have to give adolescents an explicit message."
Dr Farren said several pieces of research found that people who started drinking at an early age were far more likely to become alcohol-dependent than those who started drinking in their late teens. One Canadian study in 2001 found that almost 16 per cent of people who had their first drink between the ages of 11 and 14 were alcohol-dependent 10 years later. The figure was 1 per cent for those over 19.
Alcohol Action Ireland pointed out that parents would be breaking the law by giving alcohol to those under 18. Marion Racked of Alcohol Action Ireland said alcohol was a mood-altering drug and should not be taken by people who were not emotionally ready to handle it. She also warned that people who began drinking at a young age were also more likely to engage in sexual activity, delinquent behaviour and violent crime.
Dr Stephen Rowen, clinical director of the Rutland Centre in Dublin, said he would always advise parents to discourage children from drinking until they were at least 18, if not older. "The rule of thumb is, the later the better. Research has found that if you have your first drink before the age of 15, you are 10 times more likely to have a problem with alcohol than if you wait until 21 or older," he said.
He understood the logic behind allowing a supervised drink in the safety of the home, rather than "wild and crazy" drinking in a field, but said teenage brains were not ready to make sensible judgments about alcohol.
This was echoed by Prof Thomas Babor, one of the world's leading experts on alcohol and underage drinking, who is visiting Dublin this week. Prof Babor, from the University of Connecticut, said countries with a heavy drinking culture had a particular responsibility to protect children from exposure to alcohol for as long as possible.
