Eric Carlin’s Blog

I ran what, at least for me, was a very interesting workshop on helping prevent under-age drinking at a conference at the Barbican on Tuesday. From the numbers who attended it’s clear that people are waking up to the need to encourage healthy behaviours to prevent teenagers wrecking their lives when young and as adults. We focussed very much on what young people themselves said about why they drank to excess - and supply wasn’t the only thing; there was also that attitude of “why not?”. The most interesting observations in the discussion for me were, however, when we talked about the need for adults - yes, you and me - to think about and modify our own drinking behaviour, rather than just continually going on about the need to prevent youngsters binge drinking. It’s a difficult one though; unless something really extreme happens, adults - like teenagers - don’t think their drinking is a problem.  The UK definitely has a cultural difficulty with alcohol. When young people I’ve worked with have described their families introducing them to drinking, this hasn’t been the idyll of the big Italian family sharing a social experience; rather it’s been the parents getting cut-price lager from duty frees to keep the kids off the streets or buying them drinks in the bar and then sending them off to a corner so the parents can be uninterrupted. Parents, teachers, politicians and others who want to educate young people may need to face up to some harsh realities about themselves.