Youths (12-17)

· Girls were as likely as boys their age to drink alcohol

· 13% had at least one serious problem relating to alcohol in the past year

· 18% had built up tolerance to the effects of alcohol

· 4% reported health problems related to their drinking

· 56% of students in grades 5-12 say watching alcohol adverts encourages them to drink

All children know that alcohol has an effect on people, whereas a soft drink wont have that effect that alcohol does, such as affecting your health. At a young age, most tend to view alcohol as a negative thing. Boys can also think that the positive parts of drinking (feeling good etc) are more likely to occur than the negatives, such as causing health problems. Some also think that they can become more social by starting to drink and start consuming at a faster rate. One problem with becoming drunk is that the next morning, not only you feel extremely bad but sometimes you cant remember what you did the night before.

Some of the reasons why adolescents use alcohol can be because they want to feel more grown up and they feel more mature. Some other reasons are because they want to dit in with friends, and they want to relax.

Children that start drinking alcohol in their mid-teens are much more likely to have an alcohol disorder in the future, than people that start drinking at the legal age. Some adolescents can also be involved in other types of dangerous products including a number of drugs, sometimes because they are drunk and accept them from other people, not knowing the risk, or because that are drunk and accept them from other people not knowing the risk, or because they believe it won't have many different effects to what alcohol can have. A lot of young drinkers begin drinking simply from peer-pressure, such as friends offering them a beer or something else alcoholic. It then leads to slight addiction and after a few drinks, a person can become drunk and ill.

Over the last ten years, an estimated 2,643 young people aged 15-24 years, died from alcohol related injuries and diseases. Youths aged 15-24 years account for 52% of alcohol-related injuries.

On average, young people begin to drink alcohol at around 13 years of age, yet some start even younger. By the time teenagers are high school seniors 80% of them have been drunk. 22% of children aged 18 and under are said to consume alcohol at least once a week.

So in all, most youth drinkers don't really like the taste of alcohol and simply do it to feel cool and mature. Many would probably prefer the taste of a soft drink yet they hardly have any of it.

I personally think that youth drinking should stop, especially for young teens 12-25. I much prefer to have soft drinks for the night as it wont make me drunk and it is far better for my health. It almost makes me sick when I hear people my age talking about how drunk they were last night or how they love to be drunk.

It has to stop, for their health's sake.