Quit wining, why don't you?

So apparently Sir Liam Donaldson is an idiot. Because despite all the evidence to the contrary - France, Italy, in fact, pretty much the whole of Europe - parents are being advised not to let their children drink alcohol before they're 18 (when they can get it themselves) as such behaviour will lead to binge drinking and alcoholism. The BBC paraphrases it as

letting children taste alcohol to ready them for adulthood was "misguided".

and goes on to say

Sir Liam described the idea of a glass of watered-down wine for a child as a "middle-class obsession"

before the real punchline of

"The science is clear - drinking, particularly at a young age, a lack of parental supervision, exposing children to drink-fuelled events and failing to engage with them as they grow up are the root causes from which our country's serious alcohol problem has developed."

Now if we are to believe this as reported, what Sir Liam is doing is taking clearly Britain-centric evidence and treating it in isolation, which is, quite frankly, idiocy. Of the four factors he identifies above, 2 are patently more serious than the other 2. Across Europe, certainly France, Italy, Spain and other sensible cultures, children are allowed to drink and 'exposed' to parties on a regular basis, with little to no ill effect. It is the lack of parental supervision or engagement and discussion which are the problems here, much as with our apparent sex epidemic (not that I'm saying parents should supervise their children's sex lives).

To put it in perhaps oversimplified logical terms, if you look at the global scale, most children who drink and are exposed to alcohol do not grow up to be alcoholics or binge drinkers. So you have to look at the other factors which make the UK different to sensible drinking societies, which are, as mentioned, mostly parental ones. Parents need to talk to their kids about alcohol, what it is and what it can do.

But kids won't listen to parents who they don't respect, parents who have no authority over them. So part of the problem is the parenting problem - many parents in the UK cannot reach their children. They cannot pass on all the blame for this, although there are mitigating circumstances in the case of alcohol - the UK has a binge drinking culture. But such reasoning leads to a chicken and egg argument: which came first, the binge drinking culture, or the lack of parental control?

By examining the apparent scientific evidence in isolation, Sir Donaldson is looking only at short term solutions and short term results. He makes no real effort to examine the cause or root of the problem, instead applying a band-aid to the still gaping wound. It is not enough to say "This is how Britain is, let's deal with it." Rather he should say "This is how Britain ought to be, let's make it happen." Idealistic perhaps, but reminiscent of a George Bernard Shaw quotation which inspired (and later eulogised) a great man:

Some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream dreams that never were and ask why not?

After all, I drank from an early age, and I turned out all right... Now, where did I leave that Scotch...?