The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence fights the stigma and the disease of alcoholism and other drug addictions.

NCADD In the News

This editorial responds to the recent controversy and concern over the underage drinking of Jenna Bush, the President's daughter, which has received national media coverage.

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The Jenna Dilemma

by Stacia Murphy, NCADD President

Americans are schizophrenic about underage drinking. While our laws say that children under 21 cannot drink alcoholic beverages, people wink and nod at college kids consuming huge quantities of beer and hard liquor. Drinking seems both glamorous (all those urbane heroes in the movies) and humorous if a fraternity boy gets falling-down drunk.

When the President's daughter, Jenna Bush, was charged with underage drinking and using a false ID to buy a margarita, radio commentators all over the dial bragged about their own youthful consumption and gave college students a pass by proclaiming drinking a “rite of passage.”

Passage to what? Into the use of other drugs like heroin and cocaine which, over time, can lead to drug dependence? Drinkers lose their sense of boundaries. Link the unpredictability that alcohol creates with the vulnerability of the young and you have a volatile mix that can wind up in violence, date rape, suicide or other risky behavior.

The younger a child starts to drink, the more serious the problem. Forty percent of children who begin using alcohol before age 13 will become alcoholics at some point in their lives. Too often parents buy into the popular misconception that “if they're going to drink, they should drink in their own homes” and provide their own children with the tools to destroy their lives. Alcohol is a powerful mood-altering drug that affects children's changing and developing hormonal system. Its use has profound and persistent effects on physical and psychological development, even into adulthood. The early use of alcohol has been shown to draw children into a host of problems and aggravate existing ones.

Today, three million 14 to 17 year olds are regular drinkers with confirmed alcohol problems. If the onset of drinking is delayed by five years, a child's risk of developing serious alcohol problems is decreased by 50 percent, making prevention the most effective strategy.

Drinking at an early age is not something adults should condone. That's the wrong signal to send, especially if there's been a problem with alcohol in the family, as in Jenna's. She's already exhibiting the classic early warning signs of alcoholic dependence: continuing her quest for drink despite being punished in two earlier run-ins with the law. Jenna is just one of millions of youngsters engaging in self-destructive behavior. They need their families and society as a whole to give them guidance and direction, not an excuse to continue drinking.

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National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc.

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