United Kingdom

Okay, so you're going to ban targeted marketing and online advertising, right?

No?

Ah, so the plan is to introduce comprehensive support and counselling for stress and mental health issues in young people, meaning they won't have to turn to these things to cope with their depressing, stressful lives?

No?

Ah, got you - you're going to improve the individual lives and prospects of all citizens, creating a utopian nation, so they can each look forward to a healthy prosperous future and genuinely have nothing to worry about?

No?

Oh good they blamed video games. I was worried that we had evolved as a culture now and had stopped doing that, thankfully not.

It'll be a sad day when GTA isn't blamed for some murder. Or indeed anything at all.

I didn't even know you could ferment children into alcohol.

We need to get them started earlier and catch up.

You say worst, they say best and neither side is wrong.

smh children these days have no constitution and can't handle their alcohol.

That's because kids are legally allowed to drink at home after the age of 5. At 16 you can drink alcohol at a restaurant or pub with a meal so long as you're with your parents. Only at 18, is there no restrictions to buying alcohol other than you're not allowed to consume it in public.

I believe it. There once was a time, that may or may not be a memory, where the bartender would serve you if you could walk up to the bar and order. You also needed money, but a bit of bartering with scrounged flotsam from the quay could cover costs.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The study, one of the largest of its kind by the World Health Organization (WHO), looked at 2021-22 data on 280,000 children aged 11, 13 and 15 from 44 countries who were asked about alcohol, cigarettes and vape usage.

Forty per cent of girls in England and Scotland had vaped before 15, and did so at a higher rate than countries such as France and Germany.

“Considering that the brain continues to develop well into a person’s mid-20s, adolescents need to be protected from the effects of toxic and dangerous products.

Unfortunately, children today are constantly exposed to targeted online marketing of harmful products, while popular culture, like video games, normalises them.”

“We’re seeing really high levels of early initiation into drinking amongst boys and girls in England,” Inchley said.

A government spokesperson said: “The health advice is clear: smoking, vaping and underage drinking can be damaging for young people and their development.

The original article contains 636 words, the summary contains 153 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

FASD is also a huge issue and the effect it's having on society is both insanely clear and very visible.

No shit tbh, most of us UK folks often have our first drunk experience when we’re like in our early to mid teens and the normalisation and acceptance of alcohol has definitely impacted this. It’s kinda like most ppl don’t see anything wrong with it, despite giving kids alcohol can literally cause issues due to it.

Quite a different case on my behalf though as I was raised pretty strict in my household and wasn’t allowed any alcohol until in my mid teens due to how much alcoholism ran in the family and my parents being scared due to that plus the normalisation of it too, though didn’t prevent drinking outside of home with those really horrid k-cider cans and me taking alcohol from the fridge that they rarely drank (except beer and I couldn’t take it out otherwise shit would happen and it would be bad) and going out with friends with it.

This is any consumtion at any level. This whole story hangs on if any alcohol consumption, at all, under 13 leads to harm. Something they have one quote on.

“People tend to have this perception that introducing children to moderate drinking is a good way of teaching them safer drinking habits. This is untrue. The earlier a child drinks, the more likely they are to develop problems with alcohol in later life.”

To date, in recent decades, each generation in UK, and elsewhere, drinks less alchole issue than the previous.

https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/31/2/424/5981990

https://www.statista.com/statistics/369808/alcohol-units-consumed-by-gender-and-age-in-england/

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-14760-y

I did find:

https://alcoholchange.org.uk/help-and-support/get-help-now/family-and-friends/alcohol-and-your-child

"There is no clear answer as to which approach is best but, overall, there is little evidence that letting children try alcohol makes them less likely to develop problems with it later on. In fact, research has found that children, whose parents allow them to drink at home and/or provide them with alcohol, are probably more likely to drink more heavily when they are older."

So it could be we are heading for a fresh boozing generation after years of decline. But it is not clear.

Nice to see the UK at the top of something!