Monday, July 27, 2009

Teach Teens How to Drink?


That's one idea from The Atlantic:
High-school seniors tend to hold romantic notions of college life: newfound freedoms, enlightenment, keg-fueled free-for-alls. But the last attraction has lately achieved a new prominence: at one major university, student visits to the emergency room for alcohol-related treatment have increased by 84 percent in the past three years....

So what might states...do differently? They might license 18-year-olds—adults in the eyes of the law—to drink, provided they’ve completed high school, attended an alcohol-education course (that consists of more than temperance lectures and scare tactics), and kept a clean record.... Binge drinking is as serious a crisis today as drunk driving was two decades ago. It’s time we tackled the problem like adults.

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