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Recent studies have produced some alarming results, suggesting that Cypriot teens have the third highest rate of binge drinking in Europe. With the benchmark being ‘at least five drinks’ in the last 30 days when interviewed, the bigger concern is the whopping 11% rise in the rate of girls in this category, with one MP saying this is the result of groups of teenagers egging on one of their members to get drunk, as long as someone will take her home.
Parliament is right in wanting to raise the legal age by a year to 18, still among the lowest in Europe, thus separating children from adults, but this is something that should have happened a long time ago. And simply by raising the age limit, the problem won’t go away.
Just as the smoking ban that is not properly implemented in night clubs (let alone public service areas), serving drinks to younger ‘patrons’ or unaccompanied minors is the source of lucrative earnings for club owners, hence their pressure on government officials and deputies to keep the age benchmark low.
Of course, the counter excuse is that alcoholic drinks and ‘alcohol mixes’ are freely available in restaurants and kebab shops, as well as supermarkets and every kiosk around the corner. And in their desperate effort to boost sales, spirits distributors could not care less who they are selling to, using the guise that it is mostly holidaymakers who absorb the majority of sales, hence a boost to foreign tourism earnings.
One stark reality that statistics do not show, or at least cannot prove, is that alcohol abuse from a young age could lead to substance abuse, while dependence on parents to cough up the money for an outing (often very generously), could set a household back by a significant sum. Education is affected and the youngsters get to lose out on the most important age of character and career building.
This, in turn, has a dramatic impact on the cost of healthcare and also gives a bad reputation to Cyprus as a holiday destination, impacting heavily on the family-friendly image, already tarnished by the lager louts and the extreme clubbers who frequent the main resort towns.
There is a measure for everything and parents, first, need to learn where to draw the line. As beer and wine production are an important part of our economy, their consumption, in adult supervision, should be allowed, as a way to pre-empt the urge at 18 to go all out and end up binge-drinking, as happens with all first-year university students during freshers’ week.
On the other hand, very often we have heard of youngsters, aged even eleven or twelve, driving a parent’s car or motorbike and then getting involved in a terrible crash. In such cases, it is the parent who should go to jail for giving the keys to youngster in the first case.
Some states in the US allow drinking and driving from an early teen age, while others are stricter. But as we raise the legal age for selling or unaccompanied consumption, this should not punish those who use a fair measure.
