What is to blame for teenage binge drinking: slick marketing, or a lack of old-fashioned parental discipline?
It’s a scenario all parents dread. You host a party for your 15-year-old and hundreds of uninvited teenagers turn up at the front gate, carrying the alcohol of their choice and expecting to be let in. These days, adolescent-style gatecrashing is a suburban ritual where alcohol is a prerequisite for having a good time. “Kids think nothing else is cool unless you go out and drink. It’s seen as the done thing,” says Sarah Poole, 17, describing the peer pressure she felt as a 15-year-old to join the weekend party crowd. The Poole family, which includes teenage children, is at the forefront of a national societal shift, in which parents are being forced to deal with rising levels of underage binge drinking among young people who are starting to drink much earlier than previous generations. Trudy Poole allows her children to attend friends’ parties only if the events are supervised by parents. But even these precautions in the semi-rural community of Skye, a 10-minute drive north-east of Fra
