But when her children reached their late teens, she loosened the reins a little. In Georgia, where she lives, parents are allowed to let their own children have alcohol in their own homes. Jason Hanna of CNN writes that Martha now lets her 18-year-old son have a beer or a little wine at home, in part to kill curiosity, but won’t serve his friends.

Suspecting alcohol will be part of his senior prom experience, she’s having him take a limo. While planning to escort him and his friends to a rented beach house for spring break this year, she expected to have a "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, but she wouldn’t furnish alcohol, and she’d take away their car keys.

Martha says it’s probably unrealistic for parents to forbid alcohol to older teens outright. Instead, she thinks it’s best to teach moderation, safety, and responsibility. "If you can be around your child and monitor them all the time and watch everything they do, and if it works for you and them, then [prohibit it]," said Martha, an Atlanta-area resident who spoke on condition that her last name be withheld. "But I think, given what’s out there, you have to teach them how to be safe and considerate of others."

U.S. law requires states, as a condition of getting highway funds, to prohibit people under 21 from buying or publicly possessing alcohol. Some states have situational exceptions, but no state allows people to furnish alcohol to an underage person who isn’t their child, ward, or spouse, said Mike Hilton, deputy director of the division of epidemiology and prevention research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Yet about 10.1 million people ages 12 to 20 in the United States — more than a quarter of that age group — drank at least once in a certain month’s period in 2008, according to that year’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

More than 30 percent of underage drinkers said they paid for their most recent drink; for those who didn’t pay, the most common source was 21 or older and not a relative, according to the survey for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Hanna writes that with matters of health, safety, morality, and legality to consider, what goes through parents’ minds when they determine what stance to take with their children on alcohol?

Debbie Taylor of Casper, Washington, says she told her son, Casey, that she didn’t want him to drink while underage, but that if he ever did, he was not to drive. She wishes her message had been different.

Casey Taylor was 18 when he died of alcohol poisoning in July 2002. Just two months out of high school and one month into living away from home with a roommate, he had succumbed to a challenge from friends to chug a large amount of rum, his mother said, adding that his blood-alcohol content was 0.41 percent.

Debbie Taylor, 52, said she’d never caught her son (an honor roll student and varsity football player and wrestler) drinking, but she twice found rum bottles hidden in her garage when he was 17 and suspected they were his. She threw away the first one and left the second one.

"My reasoning for leaving the second bottle there was that all of the kids are doing it, and I did it growing up," she said. If I could go back, I would make it absolutely clear that I didn’t want him drinking at all—that he was underage, that it is not legal," she added. "That’s what I did with his younger brother [then 16] after Casey died. It was made perfectly clear to him that I didn’t want him drinking at all until he was 21. And he didn’t."

Taylor joined Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 2003 and is now the Wyoming chapter’s spokeswoman. She said she now believes teens aren’t ready to drink.

MADD supports the minimum drinking age of 21 years, citing numerous studies showing that it has reduced alcohol-related fatalities and injuries since it was federally mandated in the 1980s, and arguing that drinking can be harmful to teens’ still-developing brains.
Laura Dean-Mooney, MADD’s national president, said parents can prevent underage drinking by discussing rules and consequences often and early—starting around fourth grade, when peer pressure starts to kick in. She said parents can find tips on how to encourage alcohol abstinence and set rules and consequences on the MADD-operated website ThePowerOfParents.org.

"The tricky thing with letting kids in their late teens drink is that you’re not always going to be home every time they choose to drink. You’re not always going to be there to take away the keys," she said when asked whether she could understand parents who argue that absolute prohibition isn’t the way to go.

Sheri Reed, an editor with The Stir, a blog run by CafeMom about issues for mothers, says her readers give her a full range of reactions and perspectives when it comes to teens and alcohol.

Reed says the topic is important for her, in part because she’s a mother of boys ages 7 and 3, and because she’s a recovering alcoholic who started drinking in the eighth grade and has been sober for nine years.
The California resident has written that she has no intention of introducing alcohol to her children when they’re teens. She does intend to talk to her kids about her experiences and let them know that alcohol isn’t necessary for a fulfilled life.

She doesn’t know yet what her exact plan will be beyond lots of talks. But she says she doesn’t expect that she and her husband will be able to stop their children from trying alcohol before they’re 21.

"I don’t think that’s a reality in this world," Reed, 39, said. "It’s my hope that they just won’t be insane."

As for Martha of Georgia, she says she generally discourages her 18-year-old from drinking and reminds him it’s against the law outside her supervision at home. Putting him in school activities and encouraging him to study hard (she says he’s a straight-A student) helps keep him out of trouble.

"He has a good grounding in what’s healthy and what’s not. That’s what I taught my children—how to live with balance," she said. "I’ve seen people go extreme in either direction [with alcohol], and I don’t think either one is totally healthy."

Doctor Peter Delany of the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration says four percent of them buy their own alcohol.

He said many parents concentrate on other problems. "People have tended to look at illicit drugs as something worse. This is the number one drug for kids. It’s easily accessible for many of them. I think that people need to start paying attention and need to start talking to their kids and do it often," he said.

The three leading causes of death for young people are suicide, homicide, and accidents. Health experts say all those are exacerbated by alcohol use. Research also shows that teens who begin drinking before 15 are four times more likely to have alcohol problems as adults.

Burns said he was "shocked" by the number of suspensions, which he described as "totally unacceptable." He added, "The last thing anyone wants to see is schoolchildren staggering drunk in the street.”

"Alcohol abuse and binge drinking, particularly among young people, is an ever increasing problem in our society. It is quite shocking to learn this behaviour is not just restricted to town centers on Friday and Saturday nights, but has now made it into our schools as well,” he said.

"If children are getting so drunk on a regular basis it is affecting their schooling then serious action needs to be taken by both head-teachers and the parents. Harsh discipline needs to be brought to bear both inside and outside the school. The issuing of suspensions in these cases is totally justifiable and that needs to be backed up with further punishment at home," Burns added.

The statistics cover the academic years from 2003-04 to 2007-08 but no details are available on whether the students involved were under the influence of alcohol on their school premises.

Suspension and expulsion figures for the 2008-09 school year will be published in the coming weeks.

The latest MBF Healthwatch survey, summarized in a Science Daily release, surprised Bupa Australia Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Christine Bennett. The long-term implications caused by alcohol on young adult brains that are not fully developed also created concern.

"Our survey suggests many Australians believe it’s acceptable to buy alcohol for teenagers and allow them to drink under parental supervision at home," Dr Bennett said in Science Daily.

"Some parents may think this is harmless; some may see this approach as a way to teach their teenage children about socially responsible drinking. But we want parents to understand that early exposure may actually be doing them damage. Evidence suggests that the earlier the age that alcohol is introduced, the greater the risk of long-term alcohol related health problems.”

Other survey results show the overwhelming acceptance among Australians in the supervised underage drinking, as well as the link between this acceptance and income. In fact, 63 percent of those earning more than $100,000 supported supervised drinking; 53 percent of people earning between $70,001 and $100,000 support it; and 48 percent of those earning between $40,001 and $70,000 also support the activity.

Dr, Bennett noted that there is a gap between the best medical evidence and parental actions. She also believes this study challenges the belief that parents are well placed to assist their children to avoid alcohol during the critical years of brain development. Early exposure to alcohol can disturb a wide range of key brain functions, which can cause permanent disruption to some of the brain’s most important integrative functions.