A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics urges parents to take an active role in their kids' thinking and perception of alcohol, and encourages them to start talking about it with their kids at age nine.
"Kids do listen to them and even though they might pretend they don't," said report author Lorena M. Siqueira, M.D., M.S.P.H., FAAP, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Substance Abuse.
According to the report, adolescents abuse alcohol more than any other substance like drugs or pot, and the rates spike in high school.
By 12th grade, roughly 79 percent of the youths would have tried alcohol. HealthDay reports that 36 to 50 percent of high school students drink alcohol, and 28 to 60 percent of those drinkers report binge drinking.
Siquera said that this is even worse, because those numbers are based on the adult definition of binge drinking, which means drinking five or more drinks for men, and four or more for women.
Because youths are typically smaller and weigh less than adults, they are likely to reach an unsafe level of blood alcohol concentration earlier, and can become intoxicated with as few as three drinks in two hours.
Adolescent alcohol drinking and intoxication is highly related to many dangerous incidents. The report found that one-third of all fatal vehicular crashes involving alcohol happen among 15- to 20-year-olds.
"The top three causes of mortality in teenagers are motor vehicle accidents, homicides and suicides, and alcohol is strongly associated with each of these," Siqueira said.
As per HealthDay, Dr. Bennett Leventhal, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, said: "we spend a lot of time worrying about all manner of substance abuse, and we should, but this report brings home that the most commonly abused and dangerous drug for children is alcohol."
The AAP recommends that parents should talk to their children as young as nine years about alcohol drinking.
"As parents we all need to own it, that if we aren't the ones talking to our children and informing their views, then someone else is going to do it," said Marcia Lee Taylor, president and CEO of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, via HealthDay.
Siquera added that parents should talk about the dangers of drinking, how to handle scenarios in which alcohol is present, how to drink responsibly, and also tell their kids that they can count on them to pick them up if they need to leave a party where alcohol is present.
Parents are also urged to not allow their kids to drink even if they are present, and for their drinking to also be responsible.
