Rachel Baldeo

As ado­les­cents in to­day's so­ci­ety, we are faced with a host of quan­daries which trou­ble us emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly, mak­ing it com­pli­cat­ed for us to go about our dai­ly rou­tines with­out be­ing crit­i­cized by oth­ers. One ma­jor dilem­ma which we are faced with as teens, is that of al­co­hol con­sump­tion. De­spite the fact that al­co­hol has many detri­men­tal ef­fects (such as los­ing one's mem­o­ry, learn­ing abil­i­ty, and con­trol of oth­er in­ter­nal bod­i­ly func­tions) the is­sue of un­der­age drink­ing has be­come a ma­jor so­cial prob­lem amongst teenagers in our so­ci­ety and can be com­pli­ment­ed by the fact that the ma­jor­i­ty of ado­les­cents are per­mit­ted to con­sume al­co­hol by their par­ents.

I think par­ents should dis­cour­age young ones from con­sum­ing al­co­hol at such a ten­der age be­cause of the many un­favourable ef­fects which come with its use. As par­ents, one should set a good ex­am­ple and be a good role mod­el to one's chil­dren so in re­turn they too can pass down the teach­ings, morals and val­ues which they up­hold to their chil­dren. Ado­les­cents in­ter­act with a va­ri­ety of peo­ple from dif­fer­ent back­grounds ei­ther at school, at the mall, beach, or any oth­er place they so­cialise, ex­pos­ing them to a di­ver­si­ty of things which are (or not) taught at home. Teenagers are very in­quis­i­tive crea­tures who may take the risk to dis­cov­er what they are ex­posed to by their friends or the peo­ple they sur­round them­selves with. Most teenagers are still ac­quir­ing their sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­el of ed­u­ca­tion and have had many neg­a­tives oc­cur in their lives due to ex­ces­sive al­co­hol con­sump­tion.

There are sit­u­a­tions that I know of which reached to the ex­tent of one's stud­ies be­ing jeop­ar­dised. One par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual I knew had just turned 18 and drank liquor dai­ly due to trou­bles go­ing on in his house­hold. His par­ents could not tol­er­ate the per­son he had be­come and threw him out since he be­came ag­gres­sive when he was ine­bri­at­ed. He would throw the or­na­ments in his house at his sib­lings, par­ents and would even use ob­scene lan­guage to teach­ers and class­mates at school. Even­tu­al­ly, he stopped at­tend­ing class­es and en­joyed be­ing in­tox­i­cat­ed with his peers – a prime ex­am­ple of peer pres­sure. As a re­sult, he end­ed up in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion in his life.

Teenagers can be per­suad­ed to stop un­der­age drink­ing by mak­ing them aware of the le­gal drink­ing age and the in­ju­ri­ous ef­fects of al­co­hol con­sump­tion by guid­ance of­fi­cers at school ed­u­cat­ing them via films and oth­er me­dia. Al­so, more com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres can be built, if pos­si­ble, in al­most every vil­lage so youths can par­take in both ed­u­ca­tion­al and en­ter­tain­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. In ad­di­tion, law en­force­ment meth­ods should be more strin­gent. Very high charges (and penal­ties) should be en­forced when shop and store own­ers are found guilty of sell­ing al­co­hol to un­der­age per­sons. As a re­sult, teens will have no sources for the sub­stance and will even­tu­al­ly stop con­sum­ing it. How­ev­er, if these in­di­vid­u­als are caught drink­ing, they should be pun­ished ac­cord­ing­ly.

In ad­di­tion, on a week­ly ba­sis, from Mon­days to Sun­days with­in var­i­ous time frames there should be po­lice of­fi­cers in dif­fer­ent shops which sell liquor tak­ing note of the in­di­vid­u­als who come to pur­chase these al­co­holic bev­er­ages. The of­fi­cers will act as a de­ter­rent to un­der aged in­di­vid­u­als. Tak­ing these mea­sures can re­strain youths from prac­tic­ing bad habits and ul­ti­mate­ly taint­ing so­ci­ety. As sen­si­ble, young, up­com­ing adults, we have the in­tel­lect to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween right and wrong. We al­so have rights as cit­i­zens – the free­dom of thought and ex­pres­sion. We have the right to say NO to those who are forc­ing us to do things that we shouldn't. We have the right as young women and men to up­hold our rep­u­ta­tion and con­duct our­selves in an ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner in so­ci­ety.