A collective responsibility

A short article you carried on September 28 (page 80) was entitled "Parents are the key to reducing under-age drinking".

This article smacks of the alcohol industry's practice of regularly circulating snippets from some reports, serious or otherwise, quoting a sentence here and there to mislead the public and project themselves as authorities and people who purportedly care about the under-age drinking and bingeing problem.

This strategy was used in the article when just a sentence was quoted from an exhaustive 300-page report titled "Reducing Under-age Drinking: A collective responsibility 2003" published by the National Academies Press of America. This report is a BOYCF (Board on Youths, Children and Families) project, researched and compiled by the American National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

The following descriptive summary on the report reveals the true picture while reading the whole report should serve as an eye-opener.

"The report of the National Academies' Committee on Developing a Strategy to Reduce and Prevent Underage Drinking, Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility, was released in a combined press conference/public release on September 10.

"Alcohol use by young people is extremely dangerous - both to themselves and society at large. Under-age alcohol use is associated with traffic fatalities, violence, unsafe sex, suicide, educational failure, and other problem behaviors that diminish the prospects of future success, as well as health risks - and the earlier teens start drinking, the greater the danger. Despite these serious concerns, the media continue to make drinking look attractive to youth, and it remains possible and even easy for teenagers to get access to alcohol.

"Why is this dangerous behaviour so pervasive? What can be done to prevent it? What will work and who is responsible for making sure it happens?

"This report addresses these questions and proposes a new way to combat underage alcohol use. It explores the ways in which many different individuals and groups contribute to the problem and how they can be enlisted to prevent it.

"The report says that reducing under-age drinking requires a co-operative effort from all levels of government, alcohol manufacturers and retailers, the entertainment industry, parents and other adults in a community. The report proposes a comprehensive strategy to curb under-age drinking, a problem that costs the nation an estimated $53 billion annually, due in part to losses stemming from traffic fatalities and violent crime."

The report refers to the situation and facts and surveys on the problem in America.

The most disturbing and telling difference between Malta and America is that, sadly for us in Malta, under-age drinkers refers to youths under 16, while for Americans, under-age drinkers refers to young people under 21. Yes, we foolishly and irresponsibly consider 16-year-olds old enough to legally indulge in alcohol consumption at will, with all its harmful consequences.

Come on, let's wake up to this reality and do something about it.