In my citizen class at school we were dissucussing teen drinking and thugs. Which whatver anyone says related.
yes I drink at house parties I go to, but a) this is not frequently as it is for some teens and b) it is not a large amount.
do you think it is right for parents to let their children hang out on a green for example and get drunk, whilst vandlising the place?
it is very good that the parents controls their loved one until the age of 16-18. because this is crucial age that a child gets spoilt. but as the child reached the age 22 above, he regret his past, and rethinks every thing and focuses on the career. so parents should take the responsibilities over controlling their children..
i have to say that its okay for those around 17/18 to drink. however the vandalising part you mentioned is never ok. the vandalizing is part of the reason theres such a bad rap about underage drinking and the legal age would never be reduced as a result.
I think parents shouldn't be TOO concerned about their children drinking at parties & such, because it's not necessarily something bad. We all did it, and parents should know that if they forbid their children to do it, they'll do it in secret anyway and it might be 100 times worse. Education is the way to go, not pure repression!
However, vandalism is NEVER ok. I don't understand why you associate vandalism and getting drunk? I've been drunk plenty of times at parties and I never did ANY KIND of vandalism. Not all people who like to drink at parties are vandals...
i think that teen binge drinking is a part of growing up / maturation period. when i was 16 years old, i'd get wasted every weekend. now i'm 23 and i drink no more than a glass of wine only when it's someone's birthday or something like that.
i think that you need to get "i'm-so-drunk-i'll-puke" drunk at least 5 times during your teen years. that way, you'll see that getting drunk isn't really fun and you'll stop drinking.
that's my phylosophy and it worked 
I first would like to say that parental control should be different for every child and every situation. For instance, I am only 16, but I am quite responsible and mature for my age, so I could handle a drinking situation. Others at my age could not.
So in reality it depends.
I think that underage drinking can be a fairly serious problem. In several countries such as the UK, the legal age for drinking is 18. This is because your liver (that's the bit of your body that deals with and eventually removes the alcohol from your system) isn't properly developed until you're 18. If you go out and get very drunk a lot before your liver is properly developed, it can cause some serious problems that wil catch up to you in later life.
My problem with underage drinking is not so much the fact that they have alcohol. If kids these days went out to a party and drank a couple of pints of beer, relaxed, had a good time and then went home, it'd be absolutely ok. However, there is very much a culture of "yeah, we've got alcohol... lets get drunk!", and that's when the problems really arise.
In the US, the legal age is 21 - although this sounds quite harsh, I wonder if it's actually a very good idea. Several years ago, there were a group of 18-19 year old Americans who came over to the UK. They'd never been able to drink legally before, so they just went nuts and got paralytic. Three out of the four of them were sick as a dog, and they all had terrible hangovers in the morning. I think that by the time you're 21, you've grown up a bit and this culture of going out and getting totally wasted every weekend has passed. However, I see the point gerontius is making - when I was 18, I did some silly thing because of my alcohol intake. Experience counts for a lot, so I'll know not to do some of that stuff again - by making the legal drinking age 21, perhaps you're just offsetting the problem.
I think the problem isn't age, but attitude.
If parents would teach their kids about being responsible, and teach them how to use alcohol resposibly there wouldn't be such a problem.
I've been drinking alcohol since I was sixteen. I have never driven while drunk, or gone out and vandalized someone's property.
It is possible to be resonsible from a young age, but there are some people in thier fourties who I wouldn't trust to be home by themselves, much less trust with alcohol.
Age isn't, and shouldn't be the issue. Unfortunately I can't think of a reliable way to measure maturity.
if the topic is teen drinking as it relates to teens reverting to thug acts. then i think that there is a correlation. while drinking one is more suseptiple to group think. it is easier to follow along with an act of vandalism or of the like while one is drunk. while it is true that there are many people that drink and don't go out and get in trouble, but then there are others where this isn't the case. so it isn't a case of alcohol causing people to become thugs, rather thugs drinking and that exasberating thier character.
i mean we have all had that one friend where he's an instant a$$hole just add alcohol.
I agree with ralphbefree, people that are going to vandalize and behave like idiots are generally idiots before they get drunk too. It's been my experience that there are generally 3 type of drunk people. 1. Those that just get happy and mellow and want to hang out and play games and bs. (I am this kind of drunk). 2. Those that use drinking as an excuse to do things they want to do sober but are too reserved; table dances, hooking up with random people, etc. 3. Those that get violent. I have been to parties with these kind of drunks and it is no fun and they usually chase away all the girls they are showing off for in the first place.
As far as the drinking age, I think it would be better to drop it to 18 and also increase the driving age to 18 or even better 21. Driving is a privelidge, and while it can be important to be able to get around in highschool, I have had too many friends be irresponsible behind the wheel and get themselves or someone else killed. (There is at least one major accident involving high school kids every year where I come from, the most recent was two months ago and a guy I coached back in Little League lost an eye and was in a coma for several weeks.)
I am very against binge drinking and drinking until you are "wasted." I will admit it has happened to me, but I feel like most teenagers want to drink just because it is not allowed. If they are taught to drink right from an early age they will do do this. That is why I think it is okay for parents to give alcohol to their children. However in countries like the U.S. these things are hard. I was just home for Christmas with my family and a friend. My dad told me it was best not to allow my 20-year-old friend to drink with us at dinner for fear of being sued or something.
