If you were the parent of a fourteen year old boy and the police rang you in the early hours of the morning to tell you they had found your son, unconscious and only responding to pain stimulus, laying on the road, in a pool of his own vomit and had taken him to hospital, would you consider binge drinking a problem? The mother of this child sat with him through the rest of the night, not knowing if he had aspirated his own vomit, or even if he would survive.

Binge drinking is a problem amongst young people. They do not have the maturity or self control to know when they should stop drinking and some of these young people are dying from alcohol poisoning. It is said that every time you get drunk you destroy brain cells and it is believed that the effects of poor memory and learning in young binge drinkers are long term.

The concern about teenage binge drinking is world wide. In England the British Medical Association published a report highlighting fears that children who abuse alcohol are setting a pattern for later life. The report by BBC News also states that the harmful effects of long term drinking in adults will be far more pronounce in children as alcohol will have more effect on developing bodies.

Alcopops have come under fire in Australia as the drinks of choice of the young people who are binge drinking and the Australian Government has raised the tax on these drinks in an effort to curb underage binge drinking. Many Australian believe this step will not work and publicans are reporting that even though the sale of Alcopops has dropped dramatically the sales of bottles of spirits have risen. This leads one to believe that these binge drinking young people are now mixing their own drinks and in all probability their alcohol consumption will rise.

The drug rehab treatment site lists the most addictive drugs as Nicotine, Heroin, Cocaine, Alcohol ,Caffeine and Marijuana. This list will come as a surprise to many people as Alcohol and Marijuana have not been thought of as addictive and few people think of Alcohol as a drug.

Binge drinking is a problem. It does put a strain on our health care system where hospital staff are being confronted by abusive drunks and unconscious children but in the future in will put an even greater strain on the system when the long term effects of binge drinking among today's youth becomes apparent. It concerns me that many of our binge drinking youth will fall victim to alcoholism, dementia or any of the many adverse affects of their behavior and that Governments and society in general should take more definite steps to prevent this from happening.

Banning alcohol advertising is not working and raising the taxes on the sale of alcohol is not working and prohibition certainly did not work but unless we act quickly then many of our children will be lost.

references
BBC NEWS | Health | Teenage drinking
www.drugrehabtreatment.com/eff ects-of-binge-drinking.html

Learn more about this author, Margaret Kennedy.
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