Tens of thousands of 11-year-olds are getting drunk at least once a month
Posted on 08/31/2007 10:41:45 AM PDT by Stoat
Tens of thousands of 11-year-olds are getting drunk at least once a month
A "hard core" of young teenagers is drinking to increasingly dangerous levels every week, it has emerged.
Tens of thousands of 11-year-olds are also getting drunk at least once a month, despite a drive to cut soaring numbers of young drinkers.
Four out of 10 pupils aged 11-15 have tried smoking at least once, and a majority of young smokers are illegally served in shops.
The official survey of tobacco, alcohol and drug use among 11-to 15-year-olds reveals the number of school-age drinkers is falling overall but a hard core is consuming more each year.
Regular drinkers aged 11-13 are consuming more than 10 units a week — double the amount in 2001 — while 6,000 11-year-olds also smoke once a week.
Older teenagers who drink regularly are also downing 11.4 units a week, a rise of one unit on last year and the equivalent of five and a half pints. Half of this group are binge-drinking up to two days a week.
The Government said the figures are a success story because 45 per cent of school pupils have never drunk alcohol, a rise from 39 per cent four years ago.
But campaigners said tens of thousands of young people are still damaging their health by increasing their consumption.
Frank Soodeen, of Alcohol Concern, said: “The overall number of young drinkers may be going down but there is now a core of young people who are finding it much easier to get hold of alcohol because of a lack of parental support and the wide availability of drink.”
Today's report shows that one in five pupils is getting drunk once a month, including four per cent of 11-year-olds.
With more than 611,000 children this age in England, it suggests almost 24,500 could be drinking to excess every week.
The survey of 8,200 pupils at 288 schools shows that nine per cent of 11- to 15-year-olds are smoking regularly. The majority buy cigarettes from shops.
The legal age for buying tobacco will rise to 18 in a month but Amanda Sandford, of lobby group Action on Smoking and Health, said shopkeepersare likely to break the law.
“There are huge problems here with retailers not carrying out thorough checks,” she said.
I remember my cousin and I finding a few jugs of hard cider in my grandparents cellar. Alcohol content was probably about 3%. Deceptively good tasting stuff until the headache later. We were about eight or nine then. Taught me a lesson. I didn’t have another drink for twenty some years. Smoking was another thing. Most of the boys I grew up with tried it one time or another and some took up smoking a pipe or having a chew. Very few smoked cigarettes as they were too expensive. I tried a chaw once but didn’t know not to swallow the juice. I was sick as a dog for a couple of days. Never tried it again.
I had fired my first .22 at sometime around age 7 as I recall, and have amassed a nice collection of firearms since. I've never spent much time sitting around drinking because there's so much else to do....you're probably quite right.
My mom use to put rum in my bottle when I was an infant to get me to sleep. Now, the only hard liquor I like is rum.
They have turned to the bottle because global warming is so depressing.
I don’t remember that, but maybe my son does. He remembers all things Harry Potter. I remember the adults drinking, but not the kids (except the butterbeer).
However, in the “Deathly Hallows” they were acting pretty much like adults and they were 17. It’s kind of like it’s okay to drink when you are 18 and in the army.
It wasn’t like they were 11 years old and going around getting drunk.
It certainly didn’t make an impression on me, but I’ll have to ask my kids.
These days, if word of that ever got out she would probably be arrested for 'child abuse'.
It probably worked just fine and, in the amounts she used, posed no health risk. Another sad reflection of the hysteria of our times.
It’s one thing to be a poor actor and it’s another to be a poor actor and not know it.
Anyway, the English have a different standard that Americans. The people playing the Weasley’s would do well in America whereas Watson and Radcliffe would only do well in Englnd. We would consider the latter “stiff”.
I saw the last movie this week and was disappointed in the acting. The story was pretty good but there was a lot of “going through the motions”. The exception was the person playing Luna who I suspect really is Luna in real life. My son told me after the movie that her father was an Ewok.
I really wonder what my kids would say if they were ask if they had alcohol.
I don’t drink much, but we were on vacation in San Antonio staying at a hotel on the river walk and I ordered several margaritas at a restaurant on the river walk. My kids were shocked, and they all wanted to know what I was drinking.
I gave them little drops of the margarita. 2 of my kids said “Oh, yuck!!!”, and then one of my daughters said “Yum!!!” I’m going to have to watch out for her.
Actually she claims the pediatrician told her to do that, sometimes I wonder though : )
It wouldn’t surprise me at all. All the trends seem to point to degradation of the culture. And once the snowball gets rolling, it’s hard to stop it.
Unfortunately, I think the only thing that will wake the nation up is something so horrific (terrorist acts, AIDS-type epidemics, etc.) that people have little choice but to turn back to God and traditional values.
In my Junior High science class, we took a vacuum pump and put a paper filter in a holder in line to the intake. At the intake to the filter, we put a cigarette holder. We ran 2 packs of lit cigarettes through it and then looked at the previously-clean, pure white filter, which was now covered with an icky brown sticky tar that reminded of the tar that they use to pave streets with.
I never had the slightest interest in smoking after seeing that, right before my eyes.
‘My mom use to put rum in my bottle when I was an infant to get me to sleep.’
My grandmother would give me a little glass of beer for the same reason. Now I hardly ever drink beer except with some kinds of food.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this kind of stuff lately. When I was growing up in the early 60’s, things were different.
Oh, I know people were wild then too, but it still was different. We knew it wasn’t a good idea, we knew it was wrong. Kids who got pregnant were sent to their aunts to have babies. Kids who showed up at school drunk were the jerks.
I think it has a lot to do with the willful erasing of organized faith in people’s lives. Even if you didn’t believe, you went to church and got a moral lesson every week. Kids nowadays are taught to be accountable to no one but themselves. “The greatest love of all”.
It’s funny how mankind thinks they are constantly making things better, while I see it slowly getting worse and worse. Even the music nowadays is garbage.
I don’t know about the USA. But, from what I’ve experienced with friends and public in Scotland and England is an extremely high rate of drinkers. Scotland in particular. Probably not much else to do in a place where it rains so much. Genetics, I guess, also contribute. Very sad.
Beat me by 74 seconds!
Well you'd expect that, wouldn't you? After all, they were only 6-8 year olds then...
As we walked from our Tail Gate to Alumni Stadium we passed by a dorm unit known as The Mods. Here is a place where light bulbs are made by Heineken and Bud Lite. She said that this looks like a fun place to live. I said I will tear them down with my hands before that happens.
Shock figures show 11 to 13-year-olds drinking twice as much alcohol as five years ago.
Won’t go there.
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