Increase the price of alcohol to stop consumption in young people

Surveys reveal that the 68,2% of minors between 14 and 18 has consumed alcohol in the last 30 days. Data offered by the ESTUDES survey, published by the National Plan on Drugs and where it is also stated that around 30% have had some drunkenness in the last 30 days. Some numbers that show that there is still much to be done in the fight against the intake of these drinks among the new generations.

For this reason, different entities of society such as CEAPA, CONCAPA, Catholic Schools, FAD, FEDADI, Improve your Public School, Socidrogalcohol and UNAD, have joined forces. A synergy with which it is intended to launch a preventive war against the consumption of alcohol on the part of the minors. In it different initiatives are valued as the rise in the price of these items to curb their intake in young people.


Recommendations to the Public Administration

This fight does not only concern parents, educational entities or the same minors. The Administration must also join these measures and expose put in place measures that prevent the consumption of alcoholic beverages among minors. These entities propose the following points to public bodies:

- Increase the prices of alcoholic beverages to curb the easy access of young people to these items.

- Comprehensive control of those premises that sell or are suspected of selling alcoholic beverages to minors. Surveillance accompanied by economic sanctions if this sale is verified and closed, if necessary, in the event of repeated recidivism.


- Reinvestment of these economic sanctions, by public administrations, municipal, for the improvement of sports facilities, conditioning of premises for youth leisure that offer an alternative to the consumption of alcohol.

- Legislate on advertising and sponsorships of alcoholic beverage companies, to change the messages transmitted to young people who show alcohol as fun.

- Strengthen the legislation and increase control to avoid drinking alcohol on public roads, with sanctions for those who do so and for municipalities that do not comply with the regulations.

- Promote a true Alcohol Law at the state level, which is mandatory for all local and municipal administrations. The objective is to impose the same regulations for everyone, with approved protocols of action.

- Increase support to organizations that work to prevent the consumption of alcohol in children and act on the most vulnerable groups, both public and private.


- Joint work with social services and local police to have greater control in the meeting places of young people where alcohol and other addictive substances are consumed.

- Create awareness in society about the cost to public administrations of the cleaning of places where young people are to drink and the health problems and their cost for attention to drunken people and with ethyl commas, etc.

What can parents do?

It is clear that the Public Administration must join the fight against alcohol consumption in young people. But neither can the mission of the parents in this sense be denied. Parents are a powerful educational influence, and therefore they are committed to these measures to help curb the intake of these drinks:

- Strengthen the Associations of Parents of Students, AMPAS, as the first formative agent of families, guaranteeing their financing through grants dedicated to preventive programs on alcohol consumption and addictive substances in minors.

- Collaboration of public administrations with AMPAS in the development of alternative responsible leisure programs that can be offered in schools to our young people and that allow alternatives to drinking once the school day and especially on weekends.

- Representation of families in all structures of public administrations in which talk, dialogue or work on the consumption of alcohol in minors that are favored by municipal, provincial, autonomous and state entities.

- Work in favor of the community for young recidivists, including them in specific programs that help people who in one way or another have been harmed or victims of those negligent behaviors of those who drink without control, as a result of traffic accidents, and with the collaboration in certain cases of the guardians-parents of the minor.

Damián Montero

Video: I Drank a Glass of Wine Every Day, See What Happened to Me


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