Wine, Alcopops and Life - A Discussion of Under Age Drinking

Alcohol is becoming more and more readily available to people of all ages. While it used to be only adults who had easy access to alcopops and wine, teenagers and even some children are finding it increasingly easy to get their hands on drink if they so choose. This has meant that more people have started drinking from a younger age, and drink has become an essential part of their lives. I know people who can't go more then a day or two without a bottle of wine or some sort of liquor, they've been doing it for so long they can't imagine life without it. In my opinion this isn't good. When these people have children and those kids see how much their parents drink, they're also going to think it's the norm and be more likely to go down the same path as they grow up. There's also the issue of drinking when it does come to them having children, if they carry on drinking during the pregnancy this can and will effect the baby (But that's a bigger and whole other discussion for another day).

So it raises the question, when is the right age to start drinking? Every country has their own legal ages, but for many English speaking countries the age is 18. While there are some exceptions to the rule (If you're with a responsible adult for example you can have a small amount of alcohol) this is the age you have to be to drink in a public place or to buy wine. But is that age actually helping or hindering the issue of under age drinking? By making the legal age so high, some people may argue that the age limit is encouraging teenagers to get alcohol in any way they can and consume it in an unsupervised area. That means they're got drink and no limits, a dangerous situation to be in. If however they were allowed to drink it in a pub, their house or other place where there will be more responsible people who could advise them, they may not get into over drinking. They may also be less inclined to drink as much, as the prices in venues they could go to would be more expensive.

This alone wouldn't be the only part of the solution however (Though the suggestion above wouldn't defiantly be a solution), raising awareness to kids and teens growing up would also have to be done. Some people don't think about the damage they're doing to their bodies, instead thinking it's cool to lose control and be hung over the next morning. It is after all a talking point, and some people think of it as something to do.

I personally think changing kid's and teen's mentality about alcohol is the way to combat much anti social drinking, just don't ban it. As you probably know from your younger days, you always want what you can't have.

So if you drink a lot and you have a child, maybe you should try and slow it down for your kid's sake. Maybe you could store some of your drink in your wooden wine racks. It may also be a good idea to get life and critical illness cover [http://lifeandcriticalillnesscover.biz/], as if you've been drinking a long time the drink could catch up to you and you wouldn't want to leave your child to fend for themselves...