Mal Fletcher comments

Mal Fletcher

Nothing is more dangerous for the future of a society than having its young people grow old before their time.

Figures released recently by the NHS show that alcohol-related liver disease is on the rise among teenagers and young adults.

The number of drinkers under the age of 30 who are admitted to British hospitals with liver problems, once found only in older adults, has risen by 50 per cent in ten years.

One medical expert in the field has claimed that while these statistics sound grave enough, they are in fact a gross underestimate.

Whatever the exact numbers, they may tell us a lot more about ourselves and our culture generally than they do about our young people. We should deal with this as a societal problem rather than a merely generational one.

In this age of hyper-stress, financial crises, austerity drives - one in five Britons is reportedly affected by depression - alcohol has become a social relaxant. It is the elixir many of us need to get us into the right space for socialising and unwinding.

We may spend less time in pubs these days but drinking wine at home, for example, has become a much more widespread practice in this country over the past decade.

Like many of the good things in life, alcohol is a good servant but a ferocious master. It is best enjoyed when consumed with both a healthy respect for its chemical power and a high level of self-imposed discipline.

A couple of years ago, the NHS recommended a daily alcohol limit of two or three units for women (around two small glasses of wine) and three to four for men (or two pints of lager). Yet the government at the time was forced to admit that as many as ten million adults in England alone were regularly drinking above those limits.

So while we're right to be concerned about how young people are misusing alcohol, their behaviour is in part a reflection of wider community attitudes. These attitudes have shifted so much that in many supermarkets now you can buy a can of lager for less than a can of Coke.

What kind of message does that send to the emerging generation?

Children and younger teenagers - and, apparently, more than a few twenty-somethings - haven't yet developed an adult capacity to set boundaries for themselves. Still at the stage where much is in flux, physically and emotionally, they're more likely than their elders to drink to excess, and to reach overload quickly.

Much of their behaviour when it comes to alcohol is learned from their peers, their heroes and, not least, their parents.

An Australian study some years back revealed that most young people have their first alcoholic drink at a family party or event, with their parents' consent.