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THE NUMBER OF 16-year-olds drinking alcohol has fallen by 23 per cent, but parents are being warned to be vigilant ahead of Junior Cert results night.
Both drinkaware.ie and the National Parents’ Council have warned parents of teens that communication was key to preventing under-age drinking.
Citing a European survey that showed Irish 16-year-olds drink less than their European counterparts, drinkaware.ie chief executive Fionnuala Sheehan said that the figures were encouraging. However, with 37 per cent of 16-year-olds having bought alcohol in a pub in the last month, she said there was work to be done.
“While the figures clearly indicate a need for greater vigilance by both on- and off-trade licensees in Ireland, the data also suggests that Irish teens access much of the alcohol that they consume in their homes or friends’ homes, or that they find other people to purchase it for them.”
Jackie O’Callaghan of the National Parents Council said that parents should be involved with their children’s Junior Cert celebrations.
“[Parents should] be involved in their child’s celebrations, and know where and with whom they are going.”
Jackie O’Callaghan of the National Parents Council said that parents should be involved with their children’s Junior Cert celebrations.
“[Parents should] be involved in their child’s celebrations, and know where and with whom they are going.”
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A 16 year old getting drunk is hardly the biggest crime in the world. I did it and I think I turn out half all right. No worst than anyone else anyway. I’d be more concerned about kids that age getting their hands on drugs. At least whats in drink is regulated to some extent.
And this is exactly what’s wrong with this country,
This sort of attitude to alcohol and the laws that exist around its use,
Under 18s are allowed to drink in a ‘home’ with parents consent, they are not allowed to purchase alcohol or consume alcohol in a pub.
Forbidding alcohol only makes alcohol more desirable.
Galwaybay. If you were working at night in a fastfood for exemple you probably wont say that. Some teenagers (not just1 or2 Im afraid) lose complete control of themselves. Cant believe some people find it alright. I sm not old myself and went to college too but I never went that far in term of irrespect and violence.
I sure you’ll find there more than 16 years olds behaving like that. But your right you shouldn’t have to put up with that shite in your place of work no matter what the age of the person.
Barry. If a few kids having a hangover was the entirety of the country’s woe’s we’d be alright.
Alcohol is a drug. It is one of the most dangerous and addictive and easily accessible drugs in Ireland and you advocate 16 year olds taking it.
What is wrong with you?
Barry I think if we lost the forbidden element of it and just introduced them to it earlier it would stop LC and JC nights going crazy (though my definition of crazy is a bit diffrent to the rest of you it seems).
The first time I tasted beer as a kid I thought ”jesus this is disgusting, THIS is the big thing everyone loves? ugh…” the only thing that made me continue drinking it was the forbidden element of it.
My junior cert night, and before that I had not drunk much more than sips of drink, I drank some beer followed by most of a bottle of vodka straght.
Standing in front of the dart station I did not recognize the giant sign that said DART on our way back, course most people had not seen me drink the vodka but only 3 cans and the legend begun I got drunk on only 3 cans…anyway…I went home later, woke up the next day and you know what? The sky had not fallen.
I actually think binge drinking is a WAY bigger problem from first years at college level and I saw this both as a fresher and later as an RA who had to babysit countless drunk students and it’s the same problem as the LC drink…parents make a big mystery and forbidden element of it and it makes their kids go even more mad later.
I noticed country freshers seemed to hit the bottle way harder, I got the sense they were more controlled back home and now that they were living on campus suddenluy they went from being uber-controlled to not at all and they sprung back against that control to the opposite extreme and I saw this in everything.
If you want your kids to behave like adults in their late teens treat them like it, show them some respect and give them a bit of trust. Don’t make drink a big forbidden thing. I’m not suggesting you send them out the door with a few bottles of vodka and say go nuts, but the more you try to keep them away from drink totally by making a mystery out of it and the more you try to control them and prevent them going to drink events etc the worse you will make it when they get out of your control later when they go to college.
yoman everyone thinks ”todays youth” are worse than what they were.
Working as an RA in UCD one night it was 4am and I got paged to deal with what some drowsy postgrad described as a ”rock fight” in the concourse between the apartment blocks, I went down and stood with my arms folded leaning against a wall looking at some drunk freshers throw small rocks at each other for fun (utterly wetting themselves laughing at it even though it clearly hurt) and began to wonder if the gene pool was getting worse, if today’s youth were dumber than mine were 4-5 years before and if maybe it was time for eugenics…..but as my eyes glazed over and I began to daydream thinking back to my own first year experiences I remembered how I acted as a fresher and I stopped the trip down memory lane pretty fast cos I didn’t wanna think about it, I realized in reality we were broadly of the same generation and I acted like a muppet when I was in first year too.
We just have changed and grown up a bit in the intervening years and we don’t like to remember how stupid we used to act, but most of you look back when you were 16 17 18 and remember what a tool you were, how you thought you knew it all but you realize now you knew nothing.
There is a huge gap between how you act when your 18 v 25 even and that’s a very short time period, generations are not getting worse we just don’t like to think back to our own stupidity.
I don’t think anyone is saying it’s ok for a 16yo to get plastered and stumble out in front of traffic, I think a lot of people are trying to make the point that there is a smart way to deal with it that will actually work (not telling them they can’t ever drink and if they do its very bad, but instead saying look I know your gonna drink just don’t go crazy) and a way that will make parents feel better but won’t work at all and will probably have the opposite effect (telling them not to drink at all and if they do you’ll lynch them)
Alcohol is not remotely addictive where did you get that idea??
People who have a problem with allchol have it because of neurological and sociological factors that push them towards compulsive behaviors and alcohol happens to be their compulsion but the actual substance of alcohol is not at all addictive.
People who become alcoholics don’t become them because they got smashed on their junior or leaving cert night they become alcoholics because of complex neurological-sociological interactions often determined by things that occur well before they are anywhere near drinking age.
Little bit of fact and logic can dissolve hysteria.
http://www.chemcases.com/alcohol/alc-11.htm
A little fact and logic for you Ryan. Alcohol is chemically, physically and mentally addictive.
Why is it people think if they have a link for something on the net that means their point is irrefutable?
9-11 was an inside job, I have a link; http://www.infowars.com/rare-alex-jones-911-the-road-to-tyranny-emergency-release-dec-7th-2001/
It’s not 1970 anymore we have a far better understanding of the nature of addiction now than we did years ago. Most of the research shows it has social and neurological causes.
Why do you think so many compulsive behaviors are out there? Because it’s basically all the same problem, all compulsive behaviors, just manifesting in different ways.
Shopping is not addictive physically so why do so many people spend money they don’t have and can’t seem to stop? It’s the same thing, compulsive behaviors. I did study this stuff I’m not pulling it out of my ass.
The worst people for this false notion that alcohol is addictive are ex alcoholics because so many of them don’t want to accept that the problem lay elsewhere rather than the substance itself.
Also if you look at the link you provided does not actually demonstrate that alcohol is physically addictive. The physical elements of reward and filling a void (just like it would in an addiction to prescription pills) is just one factor in the addiction equation, it’ might be PART of whats hooking the person but the actual root causes of the compulsive behavior is sociological and neurological not physical.
Nobody becomes an alcoholic because they got pissed on their junior cert night. The physical elements of whatever the drug is will only hook someone if they can also combine with social and neurological factors. Ask anyone who’s an alcoholic about their early family life, most of them had a pretty crappy childhood right when their brain was forming there was some kind of gap in the natural socialization process that they later try to fill with a compulsion.
If you want a physical factor thats key to addiction don’t look in the ingrediants of the bottle of miller you’re holding look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
Regardless, nobody becomes an alcoholic because they got smashed at their leaving or junior cert party for Gods sake, alcholism has far more complex routes than the wrong person drinking it
Even leaving all of that aside, the hysteria over teenage drinking is faux hysteria, all of us drank when we were teenagers and it did not do us much harm. Some of us went overboard and got into more serious situations, I don’t deny that, but I think what people are saying is the smart way to deal with that is not to suddenly lock up and feed into the notion of drink as a forbidden element in mortal terror that little johnny will become an alcoholic in his 20s if you let him go out on his JC night, the smart way to deal with it is to remove the buzz around it.
Telling them I know you’re gonna drink just please take it easy, I won’t go nuts if you’re a little drunk but if I find I have to pick you up from a Garda station you’re never going out again will actually work.
The more you treat adolescents like kids the more they will behave like them.
I saw that in UCD too, every time there was some drunken event that got out of hand they would tighten the rules even more and the reaction was always the same, backlash against it and behaving even more like kids than they did before.
Stop the hysteria and try to think about what the smart thing is rather than thinking with your emotional reactions.
One way to introduce the younger generation to drink within our own families is the way they do it in most Mediterranean countries. Have food as the centrepiece and a glass of wine as an accompaniment to it. It’s not ideal, but it’s a healthier approach than we currently have to it.
Alan. So your tell me buying a pint of Guinness in a pub is more dangerous and addictive than buying heroine from some shady character down a back lane?
Where did I equate alcohol to heroin you nonce?
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/nov/02/david-nutt-dangerous-drug-list
Do a little research and understand the dangers of alcohol relative to other substances (most illegal). Then ask yourself if drunken old ireland is a world you want your kids to grow up in.
Alan I’m not a nonse. I never made any offensive remark to you so learn a bit of manners and grow up. You said “alcohol is a drug. It is one of the most dangerous and addictive and easily accessible drugs in ireland.” Would you not think heroine is more dangerous and addictive
Heroin is more dangerous, alcohol is also “one of the most dangerous” as I have stated and supported.
I don’t understand your confusion around this.
Ok let me rephrase in case I’ve not been clear about my above comment so many of you seem to have taken me up wrong.
I am NOT saying there is no such thing as alcoholism, I am NOT saying it’s not a very serious problem and I’m NOT saying drink can’t be dangerous, and I’m NOT saying people can’t develop an addiction that centers around alcohol.
What I am saying is the process Alan seems to be referring to pointing to the physical element of addiction, filling the void and all that..people have that void they try desperately to fill because of sociological and neurological interactions. NOBODY takes a few drinks and gets hooked on it solely because the sensation of being drunk is so amazing. Even with substances that are very physically addictive like crack the socio-neuro elements are more dominant than the drug itself, as factors in the addiction equation.
That void referred to above … people try to fill that void in all kinds of ways, some overdo it with gambling, spending and shopping, sex, pain medication etc etc
To blame the vice they choose to fill the void, I think is to miss the point.
There is nothing uniquely dangerous about alcohol in itself in terms of it’s addictive potential (there’s plenty more danger in terms of what it actually does to your body which I think IS something to be worried about, that hangover you feel is actually your brain shrunk slightly from dehydration but with the same or higher BP pulsing through it hence the ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM sensation)
I’ve noticed people who have a specific addiction (which should really be seen as a complusive behaviour and THAT is the illness, the compulsive behavior) will often react once they have recovered or beaten it against the substance itself. Sex addicts will blame hook up sites for making people sex addicts, drug addicts will blame the pipe…whatever but if they are honest with themselves they will accept that factors pushing them towards their compulsion were personal social and mental.
No 16 year old out tonight with an otherwise stable upbringing is going to develop an alcohol dependency because they get smashed with their friends. They might overdo it and stumble in front of a car, they might have unprotected sex, they might get in a fight…but most won’t do any of those things and if you look past the hysteria (including the sexual hysteria that seems to always surround these LC and JC nights as much as the drink hysteria does) most just go out drink hang out with their friends and go home and are not really doing anything that mental or unusual at all.
Not to say either that everyone who has become an alcoholic that it’s their parents fault for a crappy upbringing but what I am saying is social and personal factors dominate (could be any factors not necessarily parents fault) and of course social factors or not we all ultimately have to have personal responsibility for our own behavior.
Finally Alan I’m not saying we should have a blazee attitude I just think there are ways of approaching this that will work and those that won’t and locking up and just saying no no no drink = evil is not going to work in preventing them drinking to excess.
BTW sure I might type long responses but I think taking 5 min to explain something properly treats the people reading these stories with a bit more respect and gives their intelligence a bit more credit than shouting a populist slogan with 10 exclamation points does.
It’s not really a drug, if it had any viable addictive qualities me and most of my friends would have been alcoholics years ago, and I’m only 18.
Here we go again, every year since I was in primary school we get the faux shock of LC and JC nights out.
THEY DRINK…they engage in semi-sexual fumbling sex like activity then pass out! The shock!! THE HORROR!!
Irish Parent: ”Where OH WHERE did my kids get the idea that drinking is great”
That previous sunday…and the 20 before that…kids play in pub as parents spend entire day there
”WHERE DID THEY GET THE IDEA…OH THE HORROR!”
Meanwhile they don’t notice that every single event in the parents life is surrounded by drink, and they’ve manage to make it a bold forbidden thing by their attitude towards it while at the same time letting their kids see them doing it on every single social occasion. Then they get shocked their kids get a mixed and confused message.
I always get amused by the newspaper headlines after JC and LC nights. One the year of my JC night, one of the tabloids said JUNIOR CERT ORGY CLUB! Turned out what they consider an ”orgy” was one person getting sucked off and some scattered tounge kissing…wow…kids these days out of control…zzzzzzzzzz
I have to say that I don’t think drinking at 16 is the end of the universe. I did it and didn’t turn into a complete mess. The problem is parents needing to take a mature attitude. At 16, I was going to drink whether my parents gave consent or not. If parents provide a safe area where they can monitor consumption than it would put stop to a lot of the street drinking and bad situations people get themselves into.
drink drank, vomit sprayed, innocence lost along with i-phone, black eyes, bloody noses and tears shed, eyebrows shaved and embarrassing clips on social media.
Wish i were young enough to join in.
Yolo
YODO = You Only Die Once
Whoring out the same headlines year after year does nothing to deter 16 year olds from drinking. They know it’s fun because they watch the majority of adults in their lives getting pissed at every opportunity. Binge drinking in college and beyond is more of a worry In my opinion.
Why would any journalist worth their salt quote from drinkaware.ie – a site that is merely a mouthpiece for the drinks industry itself who’s aim, less we forget, is to sell as much booze as possible.
Fionnuala Sheehan cites a European survey – er, what survey? Basically this entire article is based on a phantom survey. Even if the survey exists, and I would love to see it, it is well known that when it comes to alcohol, self declarations of the amounts drank are always short of the actual mark.
Why doesn’t drinkaware.ie get some empirical data rather than relying on the anecdotal?
Along with the double pasting of the quote at the end, this really demonstrates the way this article was just thrown together.
“However, with 37 per cent of 16-year-olds having bought alcohol in a pub in the last month, she [Fionnuala Sheehan] said there was work to be done” – yes, that figure is obviously way too low for drinkaware.ie’s backers.
Those of you here who think that 16 year olds going out and getting trashed is no big deal only serve to show how effective the drinks industry here has been in brainwashing you into believing that alcohol abuse is a social norm.
In addition, did Mr Hosford have to go all the way back to 2007 to find a reduction in teen drinking – what about the last 6 years? Where did that figure come from?
Why are the last 4 paragraphs exactly the same? Or am I reading it wrong?
What about 14 year olds, roll on Arthur’s Day.
Half of 16 year olds are liars
This is not news.
Oh for God’s sake we all probably got locked after our jc results! As many people have said if the kids are educated properly with abit of common sense and open communication from their parents then their less likely to go totally off the wall…sad fact is its easier for them to get their hands on heroin now than a naggin…as a parent I ‘m more worried about that
I am an example of having a very strict parent when involving drink. All i can say now is that I have a ridiculous outlook on drink. Basically if im not locked out of my brain, im not having a good night. I wish when I was younger it wasn’t made out to be such a bad/ mysterious thing.
Those young whipper snappers!
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