Why is thier more kids as young as 6th graders who become alcoholics and junkies?

Question

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A significant number of children are already drinking by middle school, suggesting that prevention needs to start in the elementary grades, researchers conclude in a new report.

In their study of more than 4,000 sixth-graders at Chicago schools, 17 percent of the children had used alcohol in the past year. Those students who'd started drinking were also more likely than their peers to have a range of problems, such as getting into fights, shoplifting or getting into trouble at school.

The findings, reported in the journal Health Education and Behavior, suggest that alcohol prevention needs to start in grade school, researchers say.

And such prevention efforts should include parents, according to lead researcher Dr. Keryn Pasch, of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in Minneapolis.

One way to do that, she told Reuters Health, would be for school- based programs to include take-home assignments or other activities that involve parents.

The study included an ethnically diverse sample of sixth-graders at 61 Chicago schools; 713, or just over 17 percent, said they had drunk alcohol in the past year.

These children, Pasch and her co

Answer 1

I think it is because parents are working more often than they used too and are having much less time to spend with their kids. They aren't their to influence them as much, and they can't keep an eye on them. The kids are, in a sense, raising themselves. It is sad, but in single parent situations you see a lot of this very young.

Answer 2

I think it has to do with peer pressure and the environment.

In media and music, alchol is almost "glorified" in a sense. Kids see this and want to try alcohol. The lack of adult supervision means easy access to drink.

Also, kids do this in social environments. If other kids their age are drinking somewhere, a child will want to "fit in" by drinking as well.

Answer 3

Because parents don't disipline their children anymore.  BEAT THEIR ASSES YOU ARE HELPING THEM IN THE FUTURE

Answer 4

Doesn't surprise me at all.  Alcohol is right up there with drugs.  Too many people excuse things like this to it being the times.  Values and principles have laxed up a lot over the years.  More divorce and troubles at home, etc.  Thank goodness it's not 100 per cent of all children.

Answer 5

The parents are not in control and don't nip it in the bud.

When my eldest was caught smoking at school when he was twelve I caned him and told his brothers that it would be the same for them.

I never had any trouble with drink or drugs with any of them.

Answer 6

a lot of the parents drink, they are bored and lack creativity,or anything to be creative with

Answer 7

kids lie.  plus the population is growing rapidly so you're naturally going to have more people that do more things.

Answer 8

There is no great mystery to this, if you are a parent. If you are a kid who thinks you have it all figured out, its no wonder you do not get it.

The only difference between what the kids posting here are dealing with in the issue of alcohol and drugs and what my generation had to deal with is the availability of pharmaceuticals in the home and the Internet.

Kids were drinking as early as grade school back in the 70's, but we didn'thave the Internet and 500 channels on TV, so things only got reported if there was an overwhelming concern about it and if there was something someone was trying to do to make it better. When a kid showed up drunk(or high) at school, there wasn't a committee meeting held, you got sent to the principal's office to call your parents to explain why you were drunk(or high) at school.

Many parents worked just as many hours as they do today, the difference was that back then if you had to call your parents out of work, costing them money and indirectly yourself, to come to school to deal with something stupid like showing up drunk (or high) you knew you were in deep manure. Kids cared more about their parents back then because we didn't have an endless media feed telling us that our parents were messing up to give us the entitlement issues many kids today have.

Kids think school is hard and boring now, they should have tried it back when I was in school. They didn't pretend to make things fun, no Internet to cut and paste your essays from, no YA! to get people to do your homework for you and no endless hours of movies disguised as information. Fewer days off because teachers did conferences after school and went to workshops during the summer.

Of course, back then, kids from 6th grade on up were often allowed to have a glass of wine at special occasions and most of did not grow up to be alcoholics. There was less of a forbidden aspect to alcohol back then because we learned something called "moderation" from our parents. We learned that there was nothing wrong with a drink or two once in awhile and didn't have the issues of using alcohol just to tick off our parents.

I raised my sons the same old fashioned way parents back then did. Not only do my sons not have problems with alcohol and drugs, they have helped many of their friends to either stop messing with drugs and alcohol or never start.

Give me all the thumbs down you folks want, it doesn't change facts.

Answer 9

1. BECAUSE IT"S AVAILABLE!!!

2. Modern-day dealers have perfected the "art" of working a young naive mind.

3. My generation has built up an overwhelming apathy.

4. A lot of times, LACK of parental involvement or concern

5. Just as frequently, HOVER parents! Some kids see it as a way of getting back at their parents, or getting away from them. Older generations actually didn't have as many "helicopter" parents as today's kids do. (That's 60 minutes, not just me.)

Referring to #2, it seems the dealers selling to kids are increasingly kids themselves. Teenagers. These guys have a more personal and closer view into the users' and potential customers' minds than most of the adults trying to help them.

Answer 10

Drug use, including alcohol and tobacco, like many of the other ills of society, are products of hopelessness and despair born of expectations being elevated by unrealistic ideals being presented by society and dashed by the machinations of that same society.

If the US plutocracy which runs the country could countenance a decent society, rather than one designed to intensify the rate of increase of their already obscene wealth by increasing the descent of the poor into worse poverty, the problem would abate.

Answer 11

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Only 17% of sixth graders have *tried* alcohol. I'd say that's a pretty low number considering how not fun middle school is.