Today Show and WSJ Debate Whether Parents Should Serve Their Teens Alcohol

Although it is illegal to drink until you're 21, 31 states allow parents to serve their children alcohol and 30 states allow minors to drink for religious reasons. "The Today Show" this week featured two experts discussing the issue, a psychologist and the editor of Seventeen magazine. A recent Wall Street Journal article also discussed parents teaching their teenaged children to drink responsibly. In the article, early exposure to alcohol was debated as either a way to teach youth to be "responsible" drinkers when they were of legal age or as a factor in current or future alcohol abuse.

The article cited several studies coalitions use in their work, such as the Monitoring the Future Survey and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health to explain the propensity of the underage drinking problem. Some of the time, parents provided the alcohol.

The article stated that nearly 6 percent of 12- to 14-year-olds drank alcohol in the past month. And nearly 45 percent of them got it free at home, including 16 percent who obtained it from a parent or guardian, according to a report released last month by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). 

"This report isn't designed to say, 'Bad parents!' It's designed to say, 'Here's an issue you should pay attention to,'” Peter Delany, director of SAMHSA's Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, told the Journal. "When kids under age 15 start drinking and drinking heavily, they are about six times more likely to end up with alcohol problems."

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that by the time they turn 21, 86 percent of American youth have used alcohol, and 50 percent are binge drinking. A World Health Organization report mentioned in the Journal article found that 1-in-10 drinking occasions by 15- and 16-year-olds in southern European countries resulted in intoxication, compared with almost half in the U.S.

"Underage drinking is not safe, and it's not the case that somehow the risk is removed because the parents provided it," Michael Hilton, acting deputy director for epidemiology and prevention research at the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told the Journal.

What the Journal article included, but that “The Today Show” segment omitted, was the effects that alcohol can have on the developing brain and the long-term harm on the brain. Researchers at the University of California-San Diego found that brain scans show heavy drinking—20 drinks or more a month—in youth can create changes in the frontal cortex, the hippocampus and white matter, leading to decreased cognitive function, executive function, memory, attention and spatial skills, which can, inevitably, lead to bad planning, decision-making and impulse control.

Like NIAAA, CADCA and its coalitions are against underage drinking of any kind. Teens who drink alcohol are at extra risk of being involved in vehicle crashes, homicides, suicides and accidents of all kinds, as well as unplanned sex, unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Coalitions throughout the country have been instrumental in getting social host ordinances passed in their communities that make it illegal for parents to serve alcohol to underage youth in their homes. CADCA and NIAAA developed a resource that provides an overview of the research in underage drinking and explains how coalitions can play a role in preventing underage drinking in their communities called Practical Theorist 6 - Using Science to Combat Underage Drinking.

CADCA also has other resources available to help coalitions enact responsible underage alcohol policies such as Strategizer 33 - Promoting a Healthy Environment: Reducing Underage Drinking, Strategizer 54- A Community’s Call to Action: Underage Drinking and Impaired Driving, how to draft and enforce social host ordinances are detailed in The Power of Policy Change - Healthy Community Consortium. 

Take "The Today Show" poll on whether you think parents should serve teens alcohol.