Parents must play their part in preventing underage drinking

As the festive season draws closer, communities and families are planning multiple social and traditional events. Invariably, these events are characterised by an inordinate rate of alcohol consumption, particularly among young people. As a practice, during this festive season, some families that have sent their boys to initiation school are pedantically preparing for their return, which includes organising gigantic ceremonies to celebrate the graduation of young boys into manhood.

These traditional ceremonies (Imigidi) are a hallmark of a broader spectrum of events that are organised by various families during the festive season. It is a moment of great fervour and delight among family and community members to experience the incident-free passage of young men into manhood. A significant element of the homecoming preparations is ensuring that there is an adequate amount of alcohol to entertain relatives and people that attend the ceremony.

Inevitably, a bigger proportion of the family’s budget is channelled towards buying adequate quantities of alcohol. Quite often, success of the ceremony in meeting expectations of attendees is largely predicated on the enormous quantities of alcohol and the degree of inebriety, which can be the most threatening peril to the social fabric of the community. The disproportionate abundance of alcohol at traditional ceremonies mirrors a petrifying picture of the extent to which alcohol has increasingly become a routine part of the social landscape for many in communities.

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Our country is rated among as one of the countries with the highest rate of alcohol consumption, which is an illustration of the extent to which alcohol has become deeply entrenched into the social fabric of communities. What is even more concerning is the reported increasing rate of alcohol consumption among people under the age of 18. The extent of underage drinking is corroborated by Aware!org study results which show that 50% of teenagers in SA drink alcohol and that someone who starts drinking under the age of 18, which is illegal, is four times more likely to develop alcohol dependence than someone who starts consuming booze after the age of 20.

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