"We do have a much higher legal drinking age than lets say France and most of Europe which is 16 as wine is often served with dinner. They have a much lower rate of alcohol abuse than Britian as children are shown how to drink responsibly from a very very young age."
You are making the classic correlation = causation error here.
Does France have a lower rate of alcohol abuse (if indeed they do, French figures for liver disease aren't too hot) BECAUSE they have a lower legal drinking age and encourage adolescents to drink wine with dinner at a young age.
Or do they get away with their lower legal drinking age and introducing childre to alchohol early BECAUSE they have a culture of drinking that is much healthier than the one we have here?
Decreasing the drinking age and giving wine to 13 year olds isn't going to change British drinking culture, where it is unremarkable for adults to get pissed both nights every weekend and in some cases to knock back a bottle of wine by themselves every evening.
We had this bullshit in Ireland a while ago when it was argued that we should have later pub opening times, because that would make us all responsible drinkers just like on the Continent. Apparently our early closing times MADE us into binge drinkers.
So pub opening hours were extended Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights until 1.30.
Did people suddenly evince a responsible attitude to drinking, go out later, drink more slowly?
They did in their holes.
People drank the same way they always had, just for longer. Dublin City Centre (I lived there at the time) was full of hopelessly drunk people vomiting and pissing all over the place, unable to get themselves home, staggering around like zombies.
Thursday late opening was eventually knocked on the head because of Friday morning absenteeism.
This girl isn't growing up in France or Italy. She's growing up in Britain.
At 15 she will already have learnt a lot of the lessons she is going to learn about "responsible drinking".
You don't change that context for her by giving her alcopops at home or wine the night before an exam.
You just teach her that drinks aimed at getting teenagers pissed are a fine thing to drink and that there is no reason to abstain from drinking when you are preparing for an exam the following day.
Bad lessons both.
Jamie
"I actually wonder if some parents give their children alcohol as a screwed up way of subconsciously reassuring themselves that their own consumption is "harmless" "
I think you might be onto something there. There is an aggressive insistence on the thread that giving alcohol to a 15 year old is really important and valuable that I find really odd.