There age to ban alcohol? In 1972 the United States was set at 21 years, a ban which, besides preventing many health problems, saved, according to a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis just published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research , many lives among young people in terms of homicides and suicides. Not to mention the thrill of road accidents in which alcohol plays an increasingly more devastating: 300 thousand accidents a day just in the U.S. survey just released by the CDC's weekly report, 85% of cases attributed to drunk drivers (5 or more if male and 4 cups or more if female) with an age that in 32% of cases ranges from 21 to 34 years. A threat that causes the circulating every year 11 thousand deaths in accidents and investments of pedestrians, bikers, or cycles.ALCOHOL AND THE GIRLS - It is, however, emerged as a new and somewhat unexpected to be involved are mostly women, particularly those born in the '60s who began drinking before the age of 21, arriving at the age of the fateful ban when it had already weaned drinkers, a phenomenon which, according to another study of the Duke and the University of California published in Developmental Psychology , comes earlier age if the development comes soon. Researchers at Washington University have calculated that in the United States to prevent alcoholism in young girls could be avoided every year about 600 homicides and 600 suicides. A warning for parents to be vigilant, however, taking into account that what really seems to work in these cases is never to start drinking alcohol, even under their supervision.
HOW TO BEHAVE IN FAMILY - University of Minnesota study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs , it indicates that the only effective control is to not let minors drink freely at home even in controlled environments such as social occasions, because then attempts to inhibit them end up having the opposite effect. Rather than representing a rite of passage into adulthood and a way to teach adolescents to behave responsibly towards alcohol, allowing them to also drink under the supervision and guidance of adults can route them to a future inability to control himself, ending with the behavior to encourage rather than inhibit drinker. It remains then a last chance, another factor appears to be effective the influence of the partner: if a girl finds a boyfriend who does not drink will be positively influenced to not raise the elbow to turn. The study has demonstrated the Pennsylvania State University published in American Sociological Review that, for two years examining 449 pairs of students, this beneficial effect was observed mainly on males by women.
