Thursday, March 8, 2007

Binge drinking in America

Binge drinking is something that many of us have done in our lives. Many of us did it in college while some of us experienced it in high school. However, there is a serious problem that is happening to today’s youth and that is that too many people are binge drinking.
I saw a story that said that there are over 7 million underage teens who binge drink. That means that there are a lot more teens that consume alcohol too. I am not saying that I am surprised that many teens drink, hell I drank when I was underage too. But I did not binge drink, especially like a lot of people seem to be.
Binge drinking is typically defined as drinking more than five drinks on occasion. And a teen is someone that has probably not experienced the effect of alcohol to know the dangers.
It is well known that alcohol can affect your judgment, but it can do a lot worse. It cam make you physically sick, it can give you headaches. It can make you fat, angry and harms your liver. Basically it can turn you into an alcoholic.
Alcohol also remains the most abused drugs among today’s youth and the fact that it seems to be getting worse is not encouraging. I guess people view drinking as a rite of passage and something that everyone should do. I am not saying that people should not drink, I drink. But teenagers today do not respect the negative consequence that alcohol can have.
I do not think parents should make drinking be a mysterious thing and not automatically forbid them from it. But parents need to be open and honest about it and hopefully that will lead to more responsible drinking. My parents were open and honest about it with me and I feel I have been very responsible about it.

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