OP-ED: The First Drink
The national average age that a child takes a first real drink of alcohol is 12. Studies show that 65% of kids obtain their alcohol from friends or family, often receiving their first drink from a parent. Yet over 30 years of research consistently reveals that parents are the #1 prevention tool to insulate children from underage drinking. Therein lies the paradox; parents have the capacity to prevent underage drinking and delay its onset, yet often, and perhaps unknowingly, they are the instigator. A public service announcement on a billboard in Central Bucks by PAUD (Pennsylvanians Against Underage Drinking) provided a chilling example of this. The text on the billboard read, “The easiest place for kids to get beer is right next to the milk.”

Unknowingly, parents may accelerate the age of first drink via a lack of awareness. Easy accessibility of alcohol, as simple as beer in the refrigerator, or an unlocked liquor cabinet, may be an invitation for experimentation.

It is not uncommon for parents, believing their actions responsible, to host alcohol-laden parties for their teens, feeling that it would be safer for them to drink at home than to drink elsewhere. However, this action in itself merely proliferates a normalization of underage drinking, sending a message of acceptance and tolerance for underage drinking, not only to their own children but to their friends as well. Furnishing alcohol to minors is also illegal, hence promoting an unwitting but powerful subliminal message to youth regarding respect for the law and authority. When research reflects that kids who begin drinking before age 15 are four times as likely to become addicted, that the brain is more vulnerable to negative effects from alcohol use during the teen years (until age 21), and when 95% of adult alcoholics began drinking before age 21, it challenges the notion of underage drinking as a “rite of passage” and should inspire a rethinking of attitude and behavior.

It is critical to empower parents with their often untapped potential to prevent alcohol use among their children. They should be encouraged to continue on-going, age-appropriate dialogue about the dangers and consequences of underage alcohol use, and to recognize the indirect and most likely unintentional messages they are giving their children when they are the providers of that first drink, or even consecutive ones as well.

Melanie Swanson, M.Ed.
Prevention Specialist
Bucks County Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc.
252 West Swamp Road, Bailiwick Office Campus Unit 12
Doylestown, PA 18901
Phone (215) 345-6644 x3123
Fax (215) 348-3377
(800) 221-6333 24 Hour Information Line
mswanson@bccadd.org